Brugge, beautiful Brugge

  Brugge, Belgium
Thursday, April 12, 2007

We arrived in Bruges at about 2pm, and had to wait for the bus for about 40 mins. They speak Dutch in Bruges, or more precisely Flemish, it is just like saying that you speak British English or American English, it is the same language but with slight differences. We were able to stay at a hostel here, so it worked out cheaper being in Bruges.

The hostel was quite nice and had a cool bar downstairs.  We were given a good map so we followed that to a few places.  Bruges is a very beautiful place.  It is set inside a series of canals which form a kind of border;

Back in the medieval times was a very wealthy place as boats used to come up the canals from the sea to trade.  I am not exactly sure what, but something happened and the boats were no longer able to make it up the canals and Bruges wealth dried up and the town became stuck in time.  The buildings and the streets look like something from a picture book. We stumbled upon a church from 1613 and had a look inside, it was magnificent, the ceilings were so high and intricate, and this was just the first one we saw.  Later that day we went on a brewery tour.  It s the last place that still brews inside Bruges.  It was quite interesting and the guide was very funny. 

We learnt a few interesting facts, such as in medieval times people used to brew their own beer as it was a lot safer then drinking the water, and it wasn't uncommon for people to be drinking 6L of beer a day!!  They say that is why they were happier back then!

We got to go onto the roof of the building and it made for good views over the roof tops of Bruges, we also got a free beer and this was very nice, Bruges Zot it was called worth a try if you ever see it.  We wandered back to the hostel for tea and headed out later o to see the town at night. 

We had to wait until about 9:30, as this was when the sun went down.  The town was even better at night, everything was so calm and quite, the water on the canals was so still that it reflected everything, we tried our best to capture it on camera, but we weren't too successful.

The next day we hired some bikes and went for a ride to the coast.  We were told it was about 1 hr away and very nice, so off we went.  The scenery on the way there was wonderful, but unfortunately the result when we got there was rather disappointing.  It was gray and dull!! and it took us about 2hrs to get there (but I think that was because we were riding so slowly).  We had packed a picnic lunch of baguette's salami olives and Camembert cheese, oh and of course some Belgium chocolates.

On the way home we stopped at a little village Called Damme, it was lovely too, right on a canal, we had a couple of beers out in the sun to give our bums a rest (why aren't bike seats more comfy) and rode the last 30mins home.

That arvo I am sad to say we realised we had gotten quite burnt, as we were covered up it was only on our hands and our faces.  I look really quite ridiculous at the moment as I have a very noticeable sunglasses mark, not very becoming.

After heading out to have a few more beers in one of the lovely squares we grabbed some cheap pasta and headed back to the hostel.  That night we invited a lone traveler down to have a few beers with us, her name was Naomi and she was from Mexico City.  She was very nice and it was interesting talking to her.  It turned out she was a chemist, who worked in a lab.  She told us that after working full time for three years she was only allowed to have 10 days holidays including the weekends!  In her first year she was only allowed to have 3 days!  How much does that suck, she also told us how lucky she was to earn enough to be able to take holidays.  It was really an eye opener, and made Dave and I realise how lucky we were.  She couldn't believe how many days off  Dave got as a teacher :) .

On our last day we checked out a few more churches, one of them being where Jesus blood is meant to be kept, it was very pretty inside, but I felt like a bit of a fraud being there.  We also checked out the hospital museum, this was very interesting and worth going to.  Things have come along way since the 16th century, at least we get clean sheets and gowns between patients!!  There are some lovely parks in Bruges and we walked to some of these and just relaxed.  We had to leave that night and caught the train back to Brussels at about five, and the euro star back to London at 8pm.  And now here we back to every day life.  Hope every one is well, don't forget to keep us up to date on your lives as well!!