A Day In Bruges

What do I love about living in London? Having Europe so close, there are all these amazing places right at your fingertips. On Sunday I'd booked onto a day trip through Brit Bound headed for Bruges, with Zaira and her friend Arpen. So we met up early Sunday morning and got on our little minibus bound for Belgium. I was a wee bit shocked to find out for once I wasn't on a bus full of Australians, but mostly full off Kiwi's and there was even a guy next to me from Ashburton (a small town about an hour south of Christchurch). We departed central London at 8.30am with a three hour drive ahead of us, along with the crazy experience of crossing the English Channel via the Euro Tunnel. Going through is tunnel is very strange, you drive into this container thing, which is on a train, which goes through a tube like tunnel under the ocean, one of those things you have to do to see how bizarre it actually is.

The other side of the tunnel is France, so from France there was a small drive before we crossed the border and were in Belgium. I crossed a land boarder, for the first time in my life; I did something that I thought would be awesome, but turned out to be the biggest anti climax ever. I didn't get a stamp in my passport, nor was there any security or police or anything, it was just driving down a motorway and passing a sign that said Belgium. Woo! Thrilling stuff. It was an hour and a half drive between getting out of the tunnel and arriving in Bruges and though a short drive, by the time we'd arrived we were itching to get exploring. Our driver had given us maps and his own little write up of where was good to see, eat and of course where to find good chocolate.

Maps in hand Zaira, Apren and I headed off for a bit of a look around, we soon realised that Bruges is in fact extremely small after walking about half of the map in 10mins. We'd walked past countless chocolate shops and cafes/restaurants, found a few canals which were lovely with the cutest wee ducklings. We found the sculpture of Michelangelo's Madonna and Child in a lovely church then decided it was time to stop for some lunch and plan the day out a bit more.
For lunch we got French Hamburgers which was basically a baguette filled with chips, meat and sauce, there seemed to be nothing French about it at all apart from maybe the baguette. Since we were in Belgium I thought I'd try some of the beers, so I had a bottle of Kriek, a cherry flavoured beer. I do love most things cherry including cherry coke, I thought I'd really enjoy a cherry beer, turns out it was one of the most disgusting drinks I've possibly ever tried.

After lunch we set off on our afternoon adventure, we had a few hours to go, but that was plenty of time for us to get through Bruges and see the sights. The first stop was the Belfrey Tower, we figured since we possibly just ate the world's fattiest burger we'd may as well walk up the 366 steps of the tower to get to the top. I didn't get too tired from doing this, mainly because the fear of falling down the tiny steps had taken over my mind. It was worth the climb though the view from the top was great, you could see all of Bruges and I'm sure half of Belgium (well it felt like you could). We made the scary decent back down the narrow stairs again trying our hardest not to fall, and hoping that there wasn't too much oncoming traffic. After the tower we did more walking around Bruges, hoping to see the Chocolate Museum amongst other things, but being late Sunday afternoon everything had closed for the day. Though on our travels we did come across what seemed like was going to be a great windmill, turned out to pretty much be a fancy looking box, though it was my first European windmill so I can't compare it to those in the likes of Holland. We made a stop at The Chocolate Line, which I must say is the most amazing chocolate shop ever! They had everything chocolate, even chocolate dog poo and also chocolate massage oil (that's eatable), though I'm not sure who would want a massage with chocolate?

There was only an hour left of the trip, and since we'd bought all the chocolate we needed we thought we'd find somewhere nice to eat and have a beer, so we found a cosy little restaurant right by where the bus would collected us from. Waffles were what we ordered; of course we were in Belgium after all, so how could we leave without having waffles? I'd ordered myself an apple flavoured beer, which unlike the cherry, was extremely tasty and I could go back to Belgium just to drink this beer again. Zaira and I also ordered a waffle each, these came out covered in cream, ice cream and chocolate sauce, I was starting to wonder if after I'd finished it whether I should go climb the Belfrey Tower again. The beer and the waffle didn't exactly go together too well, but they were both very yum.

We did a lot in the day, I think we pretty much had Bruges covered by the end of it, though I'd love to maybe go back for a weekend and do it on a more relaxed pace and really have the chance to sit down and enjoy a peaceful weekend, though it was a great way to spend a sunny Sunday out of London.