In Bruges - Starring Elysia and Mike

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Today we caught a train to Brugge, Belgium straight away when we woke up. The journey took about three hours and we ha to stop in Rotterdam and Antwerpen, Belgium before we made it to Brugge. When we arrived, we purchased a guide book with a couple of walking tours for €6 at the train station - money well spent. 

We walked from the station towards the tallest tower we could see, figuring it was probably near the centre of town and it would be easy to find our way to the hostel from there. Turns out the tower was that of the Church of Our Lady - an absolutely amazing structure, even though it was covered in scaffolding for renovations. From there, we continued our journey through the town towards the hostel (which we now knew was on the complete opposite side of town). On our short trek, we came across a very cute little bridge and we stopped to take a few pictures and admire the scenery (Brugge has many canals that are cross crossed by many small bridges).  We later learned this particular bridge is the smallest one in Brugge. 

Carrying on, we made another few hundred metres before we stopped again; this time to take a canal tour through town. For about €5 this turned out to be an awesome deal. The tour lasted for a half hour and took us to many of the most important and historical destinations in town. Later that evening on out walking tours we recognized many of the locations and were able to draw on the info the boat guide gave us. 

We eventually made it to our hostel, which wasn't bad for €40 per night, but the layout was a bit odd. The hostel was spread out into about five different buildings, and it took a bit of effort to figure out where we had to go to check in. When we got to our room, we thought it was nice, but it was a bit odd too. There was a private bathroom, but it only had a shower and sink. The toilet was down the hall in a tiny closet, and there was only the one toilet for the entire floor...

Anyways, after we checked in, we hit the streets again to continue exploring town. By this time it was starting to get a bit later in the day and we were worried that the shops and sites were gong to start closing. In fact they were: we went straight to the Belfry Tower (a 600-700 year old watch tower) and found out that we were too late to climb the 366 steps to it's top; we would have to come back tomorrow. We decided the best thing to do was go to a chocolate shop. We bought a few assorted chocolates and tasted them throughout the evening. It turns out that Belgian chocolate gas a good reason for being so famous: it tastes like a dream!!

We began two walks around the city to see pretty much all of the amazing sites Brugge has to offer, including: the town hall, provincial building, a few beautiful centre squares, some ancient windmills dating back a few hundred years, one of the original city gates, some man made lakes and the lock system that controls all of the canals, some beautiful parks and a bunch more (flip through the pictures that we will load soon to see what I mean). 

Day 1 of Brugge was very exciting and we went to sleep looking forward to the next day's adventures!

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Comments

[Dad]

Fantastic tour
Sounds like an incredible journey Mike. Thanks for the detailed writing. Love Dad.