Bruges has been on our “must see” list since the day we were born; or at the very least, since we saw the movie with the same name. So, capitalising on cheap Eurostar fares through Kristy’s work (bless you, TfL!), we headed out that way on Friday night. Even though it was dark, raining, and close to midnight when we arrived, I immediately recognised some of the scenery from the movie! In the light of the morning, the scenery looked even more familiar; but by that point, there’s a chance I was just getting confused with Amsterdam. There’s only so many ways you can present narrow buildings along a canal!
We stayed at The Hotel Loreto, and I can’t praise it enough! The price was great, especially considering it included a delicious breakfast each morning (they had a little machine for you to soft/hard boil your own eggs!). Plus, it had one of the most comfortable beds of any hotel I’ve stayed in – especially important given that it rained all weekend, which necessitated much sleeping! To top things off, when we came back to our room on Saturday afternoon, the delightfully friendly staff had left two little boxes of Belgian chocolates on the doona for us!
Everyone had told us that Bruges was only a small town, and a few hours would have been enough to see all its offerings. I think this is true, however with all the rain we had, we didn’t get around too quickly. Instead, we ambled about when we could, taking our time, and browsing at the Christmas markets, which only opened this weekend.
One thing that Belgian is known for is there beers, and there was certainly no shortage of bars around town. We stopped at one on Saturday afternoon which had a menu of over four hundred beers to choose from! I sent a photo of their menu to Jason, and as he put it so well – “where do you start?!”. We didn’t know either, so we just picked two at random, and hoped for the best!
Aside from the beer, we did our best to try as many of the other Belgian delicacies as we could, and I’m proud to say we successfully conquering them all in a single day: chocolate, waffles, flemish stew, mussels and frites. Yum! The only one that we missed out was rabbit – but you have to save some things for next time…
All in all, it was a lovely place to spend the weekend!
More photos in the album.
5 comments
Well that sounds as good a place to start as any!
Yay! Glad you liked it. Did you take a canal boat ride?
Nope, we wanted to but it was so cold and rainy! So we gave it a miss.
ooooh fairy lights…! Those markets look so pretty!
mega pretty markets Meegs! I think you’d love them! The whole town was like a storybook village, with music piped outdoors along the shopping plazas, horse drawn carriages and chocolate shops galore. Wish we’d taken a picture of the larger than lifesize chocolate Koala in one window.