How do they do that

We booked a night at St. Christopher's Inns' Bauhaus Youth Hostel in the medieval Belgium city of Bruges. This is a classic European Youth Hostel. Notice the word Youth in the description.

We were booked in Room #3. Turns our to be right over the bar. The Bauhaus bar is also a classic youth bar.

Both the music and smoke drifted up through the floorboards into the room most of the night. Every once in a while you would hear someone screaming.

Around midnight I decided I had to go downstairs and rescue my children from the mayhem of the bar. I figured there must be 300 in the bar below. Brenda's guess was 400. Was I surprised. Sure the place was smokey and the music was loud, but not near as loud as in my room. A couple old men were drinking alone at the bar. There was a group of seven or eight at one table, another table of five and my kids sitting in the back booth having a beer.

It was actually louder in my room above than it was in the bar. I think the smoke levels were about the same.

The good news is the music stops around 4am. The next night we switched to room 14. A quite room down the hall with no smoke.

Now if we could just do something about those mattresses.

The city of Bruges is a painters delight. Great for photography as well. You expect to see Sir Lance-a-lot come riding in to rescue the damsel in distress.

This picture was done with the "Sweep Panorama" mode of the soon to be available Sony HX5v. I'm loving this point and shoot.

Rob Skeoch
www.thepicturedesk.ca