In Bruges

There is pretty much only one reason that I visited Bruges over any other place in Belgium.  I saw a movie when I was in Uni.  It wasn’t a massively great movie, but it was one that showed me the only view of Belgium that I have seen.  So when I was going to Belgium, I figured that I might as well go there, it looked pretty in the film.

After a change from bus to train in Brussels (which looked nice, the small part I saw) I arrived in Bruges.  I had had success using the maps and GPS on my phone in Cologne, so figured I would do the same in Bruges.  Without knowing which buses to take, I saw that the hostel I was staying at was about 2.5km from the train station.  Turns out walking that distance carrying all your gear seems further than I thought and meant that I received my share of weird looks while doing it.  I got a good initial look at the old town centre as I passed through.

After a supplied breakfast, I had a marked map and a food list.  To me food in Belgium is chocolate, beer and waffles.  So first stop in my wanderings was, when I managed to find it, a chocolate museum.  It gave the history of Belgian chocolate, from the Aztecs through to modern processing and packaging.  Also the added bonus of samples.  Needing to walk off that before lunch, I wandered the town centre crossing canals and generally just looking at stuff.  Lunch almost beat me.  I found a bakery and got a cup of soup with fresh bread and a chocolate dessert thing that had me struggling to get through it.  Tasted amazing though.  I had to walk out to the windmills before I risked going to a chocolate shop to obtain some samples to take with me.  A trip up the bell tower seemed compulsory before relaxing at the hostel bar preparing for a beer tasting.  A slightly intoxicated trip to find waffles at about 9pm showed us that apparently Bruges closes at about 6pm.

Before my bus back to the UK I had some time to kill and found the best Belgian waffles I have ever eaten.  A van in the town square cooked them in front of me and layered it with icecream, chocolate, icing sugar and strawberries.  It would have tasted great eating it without any toppings.  My bus had me wondering how to get back to Canterbury easily.  My bus was going to London, so I had a late ticket booked back down the same road to Canterbury and a bed in London sorted if something happened.  However, I met a lovely Australian couple on the bus who were renting a car in Dover and offered to drive me to Canterbury as they were heading that way too.  So got a ride there and then picked up and taken back to the farm to relax, recover and refresh before I move North.

Bruge 

Skyline silhouette

Buildings right onto the water

Canal with Bell tower in the background