Day 15 finds us in the Belgium port of Zeebrugge, Belgium. This is the sea town about 20 miles from the town of Brugge. We are scheduled for a bus tour so we made our way downstairs by 830. Mary had breakfast delivered to the room so that saved us some time. We were a few minutes early and had to wait for our time to go downstairs. We disembarked on the sixth floor this time. We made it through security and down onto the dock. As with the first excursion with Princess, there was some confusion as to which bus I was supposed to be on. The initial bus they pointed us to did not have a lift. After about 15 minutes of discussion they figured it out. I was put on a different bus. This bus had four other wheelchair users. We use the lift to get up onto the bus. He tied me down pretty well. The drive itself was only about 15 or 20 minutes. Belgium, from the viewpoint of the bus for 20 minutes, looks like a nice country. I later read that Belgium is the bike capital of the world and I could see that from the bus window. There were bikes everywhere. The weather was about 50° and mostly sunny. Mary initially put on her jacket. I didn’t because I wanted to wait to be cold before I put it on. The tour guide in her speech on the bus went through the map we were given. We were going into an old area of Brugge. I honestly don’t remember the time that this area was built but it had to of been back in the 1600s or earlier. From what I read much of Belgium was destroyed in World War II. This particular old area of Brugge was spared apparently. Again, guessing from the map, it is an area of about 3 square miles. We were dropped off in a parking lot south of the actual area we would wander through for the next five hours. Right off the bat I knew we were going to be in for some challenges because it was cobblestone everywhere. I said to myself that five hours of cobblestone is going to be a challenge and that’s the way it turned out. Our goal was to go to the market area, which on the map was about a mile and a half away from the parking lot. The thing was there was no direct way to get there. We ended up going a ways west before turning north and then having to come back east to get to the market. The way I wrote that implies that these were straight lines. In fact, they were anything but. There were countless little streets. Some of them had street signs so you had an idea where you were and others didn’t. Some of them sounded a lot alike – Wollenstraat and Wollestraat. Some of them they were crazy long names and only part of the street was named on the building whereas the map had the full name so we had to do some translation. Ultimately, we made it to the market. The by now it was about an hour and a half into our day. On the corner was a place that sold Belgian waffles. We stopped. We each had a waffle covered in stuff. Mine had strawberries and chocolate. Mary had cherries and strawberries. They were very good. They were not lo-cal. After we finished our main waffles we asked for a plain waffle just so we could taste the waffle itself. They were very good. Very light. We sat there for about an hour. It was a good people watching spot. The waiter spoke English well so he was able to help us through the menu and other questions we had. One of the strange things about this town was the fact that you had to pay for bathroom if you could find one. Leading up to the waffle house – Keizer Karel – Mary asked for bathroom in about five places. They all said no. The waffle house did have a bathroom if you were a customer. Mary said she went to the bathroom there and it was down a very narrow set of stairs that went into a basement area. She could not imagine anybody having to go badly running down those stairs. The waiter directed us to a spot where there was a bathroom for disabled people. It wasn’t far from the waffle house so we went there next. This was a public toilet of sorts. There was a bathroom attendant at the door collecting $0.50 euro. The attendant said this was the only disabled ready bathroom in all of Brugge. We believed her. She was quite animated and talked nonstop. There was someone in the disabled bathroom when we got there and was taking several minutes. The attendant banged on the door telling the lady to hurry up because I had to go when in fact I really didn’t. The person who was in the disabled bathroom came out and then Mary and I did the thing. It was a whole different concept. Paying to go to the bathroom. I can kind of see why they do it. The bathroom was new, modern, clean and big. It could probably accommodate 30 or more people at a time. Because we don’t understand the money, Mary initially gave the lady what was $0.05 euro. She was quickly corrected. Mary dug out the right amount of change and we were free to pee. I half joked that the toilet made more money in a day than the museum it was part of. I can see the toilet making 1000 euros a day. Because we were at the far point of our travels we decided this head back towards the bus stop. It was about 1 o’clock in the afternoon I guess. Knowing that there was no direct route and that we probably went out of our way I tried to set a more direct course. I think I was semi-successful but not completely. Again the street names caused us some confusion. Along the way though we stopped at a place called Bottle Shop which, conservatively, had 500 different kinds of beer. We went in there and picked six bottles – mostly for their labels. We did pick four IPAs. The others just had fancy labels which were interesting. Up one of the streets from there we saw a tea house. Mary went in and bought some tea while I sat on the street across and watched the people. Further up the street there were several chocolate places so we stopped at one, appropriately named, Mary. This is a chocolate house that is the oldest in Brugge according to the sales lady. It is also the company that provides chocolate to the Royal family. We wandered around in there for about 20 minutes. They had every conceivable type of chocolate you could think of. I picked up a bulk bar of dark chocolate. We then picked up I think it was six or eight individual pieces. Mary also bought some cookies. We spent about €20 on chocolate. It was good chocolate because the lady gave us samples when we first came through the door. There was a step into the place and we had trouble getting in because there was a lip which made the one step more difficult. Anyway, coming out was easy. We then managed our way up the cobblestone. By now we had about three or more hours invested in bouncing across the cobblestone. I was tired of hanging on for dear life. Mary was tired of doing the pushing. We had talked about stopping for a beer but decided to go straight to the parking area. We had both had about as much as we could take. After some more confusion we found our way back to the parking area. We were about an hour early. I sat in the sun. It was fall like. I could be mistaken, but I think even the trees had started to change colors. There was that fall bite to the air too despite it was only the first day of September. Earlier, one of the tour guides from a different bus said that the cobblestones were part of the charm of this area. After bouncing around them for four hours I thought to myself I want to put his ass in a wheelchair and have him bounce around for four hours and see if he still found it charming. I bet not. Once in the bus we had to wait for about 30 minutes because there were two people that were missing from the tour. I’m not exactly sure what happened but we left without them. We made it back to the ship in about 20 minutes. This allowed us, again, to see the more modern Brugge. It look like a small European town. Again, a lot of bikes and a lot of trails for those bikes. Back at the ship, we got off the bus and onto the ship. We came straight to the room. We unloaded our stuff and breathe a sigh of relief. We had made it back. I think we would’ve been okay with the cobblestones had there been only three hours of them. It was that last hour or so that push us over the edge. Other than that it was a very nice visit. In hindsight, I had the bus been able to drop us off closer to the market that would’ve helped us too. Mary mentioned it this morning that we didn’t learn much about the history of Brugge because were spending so much time navigating the street names. We went into one church while mass was actually happening. That was a different experience. Mary went into another church – I think it was the Cathedral – while I waited outside. Even the place where we went to the public toilet was actually part of the museum, but we didn’t learn much about it because we knew we had to figure out our way back. I guess what I’m saying is there are ways that this could have been made more enjoyable. I mentioned it to Mary that we came, we saw and we bounced. We were frustrated and beat up, but in hindsight I’m glad we did it. We chilled out in the room for a good hour. Mary took a quick nap. I flipped to the TV stations. We left for dinner around 7 o’clock. Again we went down to the Savoy only to be handed a pager. This time we went and did picture taking times three. There was one on the sixth floor and two on the seventh floor. Just as we finished up the third one the pager went off and we made our way back down to the dining room. We were seated in the same aisle where we were seated in the previous cruise. We were by the porthole so we had a great view of the sunset. By this time the ship was off the coast of the Netherlands heading northwest towards Denmark. We got some nice sunset pictures. For dinner we both had beef satay for an appetizer. I had seafood stew which was bass, mussels and clams in a white cream sauce. Mary had a pork chop that look really good. It was huge. I had key lime pie for dessert. Mary had some type of sugar-free tart which she liked. We set our goodbyes to Meow and Nick. We decided to go to the casino to see if anyone was playing cards. Initially no one was and we were almost ready to leave when a guy came up. A fourth guy trying to we played cards for about an hour. I was doing okay – up almost 50 – when I ran into a buzz saw. I had three queens in the other guy had a flush. This cost me quite a bit. After this I could not catch up. We decided to go to bed around 1130 and I was down another 30 bucks. Mary lost money to but I don’t know how much. It wasn’t much and she was only taking from her winnings the night before. She went to five and got her tea. We then went up to 12 to our room to bed. We tried to watch the movie Cold Pursuit but it was difficult because it kept cutting out. It had been a long day. In hindsight it was a good day with some frustration built in. Not bad for Day 15.