Advertisement
Published: June 16th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Hello Everyone!
It’s Monday night here in London and we’re relaxing after a long a busy weekend! I booked a weekend trip for us both to Bruges in Belgium as part of Robs birthday present. We had to get up at the unfortunate hour of 5.30am and make our way to the coach stop for a 7am departure. I don’t really know what we expected but in the end there was only 19 people on our tour, which was good for the space factor on the coach but it would have been a bit more lively with some more people. There was two Mexican women who didn’t speak a word of English, an Iranian couple and a 16 year old kid who was with there with his Mum and clearly did not want to be there!
Because of the low numbers on the tour our coach driver also doubled as our tour manager! We drove around 2 hours to Dover where we boarded a ferry (1.5 hours) which took us across to Calais, France. From there it was just over an hour’s drive to Bruges and we went straight to the Hostel. We had to bunk with another 4
people in our dorm who were all Australian and Kiwi and we all got along well.
From there we all walked into the centre of Bruges with the tour manager and he was showing us the main sights and giving us ideas of what to do. It was at this point we realized the Mexican women were walking at the pace of an extremely tortoise, and whilst we kept waiting for them to catch up in the end somehow we lost them along with the Mum of the 16 year old kid (we think she didn’t want to be found!) and eventually the tour manager gave up and we all disbanded!
First up we climbed up the Bell Tower, it has 360 odd steps and you feel every one of them! As you get toward the top of the tower the ascent becomes tighter and the steps get smaller and there was lots of people going up and down, not only was I surprised I didn’t take a tumble for one but that others didn’t! Once we got to the top the views were amazing, you could really take in the whole city plus miles and miles further into
the distance, and luckily the weather was beautiful so the visibility was perfect.
After our descent we headed to an outdoor pub of course, met up with some of our group and sat down for a few Belgian beers! We all tried different beers and they were all fantastic! The alcohol percentage however is almost triple that of Australian beers for some! Suffice to say after a few beers that was enough for the time being!
We met up with the rest of the group for dinner that night and had some traditional Flemish food before our tour manager took us to a more discreet pub with more locals to continue our “beer sampling”! There was so many different fruit beers, it was incredible! We felt hungover before we went to bed! And thankfully nobody snored in our dorm!
In the morning we got up and went for a walk around the outskirts of Bruges before going on a canal cruise which was well worth it. The town itself is just amazing, its so well preserved and almost looks like a toy town. Apparently during the war all or part of Bruges was due to be destroyed but
the Germans liked the Bruges folk so instead they destroyed all the bridges going into the township.
We bought some chocolates before we got back on the coach but of course we ate them all so I knew I’d have to buy more! Our next stop was Tyne Cot - The largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. The weather had turned by this point and it was getting pretty miserable and the memorial itself was so big. The facts and figures we read about In the information centre about the history of Tyne Cot and the surrounding area along with the number of lives lost is just mind numbing. There were graves upon graves with a huge proportion of them housing bodies of unknown soldiers, and the whole time around the memorial there are speakers everywhere reading out the names of soldiers who lost their lives.
Next we moved onto Hill 62. This was something to be seen. It has a museum with souvenirs and artefacts from the 1st world war. The guy that actually owns it - his grandfather bought the land after the war thinking he could cash in on a profit of war and he
WTF?
No idea. scoured the land collecting the bits and pieces and putting it all in the museum. The most amazing part of it though was the trenches. It has the only original still standing trenches in Europe. It even has the craters from bombs and shells that had exploded. The photos will speak for themselves. Another interesting fact is that apparently about 5-6 farmers die each year from setting off bombs and grenades that are still active from the war.
From there we then went to Ypres and spent a couple of hours there before heading back to Calais to get our ferry back to the UK. This is where the dramas began! We were meant to get the 6pm ferry but on arrival the coach line was apparently “unusually long” and as we were moving about 5m every 5 mins we figured we had missed that ferry! We finally made it to customs and we went to the counter together and I got asked a few things before she stamped my passport, but Rob had brought his Australian passport with us, which turned out to be a big mistake as he entered the UK on his British passport! So instantly
they became suspicious and started asking lots more and especially when they say he had previously had a working visa (think they thought he’d been hanging out in the UK since his visa expired!), lucky for him they were able to verify he did in fact have a British passport and let him through with a stern talking to! The Mexican ladies forgot to do a landing card and customs almost didn’t let them through and then a poor Malaysian lady on our tour didn’t get let through at all and we had to leave her behind! And then to make matters worse the tour manager told us the next available ferry wasn’t until 9pm!
But all in all, the hold ups didn’t sour our weekend whatsoever, we both had a great time and definitely recommend Bruges! Along with watching the movie ‘In Bruges’!
Rob & Di
Advertisement
Tot: 0.245s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0653s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb