Biking to the beach

I went to Belgium this weekend and had an amazingly relaxing weekend. Shannon and I stayed in Bruges at a hostel and went to the beach on both Friday and Saturday. We had quite an interesting experience getting to the beach on Friday. Rick ( Steves that is) said it only takes 30 minutes to get to the beach from Bruges by bike, and our hostel reception lady told us it would take 45 minutes. Our thoughts about the matter were that a nice bike ride through Belgium to get to the beach would be a nice little experience. Well...let me tell you...Rick and the reception lady both lied. We road non-stop for two hours and had to ask for directions at least four times. We finally made it to the beach, which happened to be a different destination than what we were planning on, but we were just happy to see sand and water. We had it set in our minds that there was no way we were going to ride back to Bruges so we begged (literally) the bus driver to let us bring our bikes on the bus. I told him that my bike was broken and we had no idea how we were supposed to get back...which really wasn't a lie because the gears on my bike were a little screwed up. Anyway, we finally made it back to the hostel. We learned from our experience and took the train to Ostend on Saturday. It only took about 15 minutes and Ostend was a much nicer city and the beach was so great. So...a little word of advice...if you are not a skilled biker, say up to par with the Tour de France, then I would double the time anyone tells you it will take to get somewhere by bike. But...looking on the bright side, at least we got a good workout in. :)