Brugge Brugge

walking with our packs

After a short train ride from Brussels we landed in Bruges. Another destination that has a beautiful little old town with the lot; Cobblestones, churches, windmills, greenery, canals, bridges, statues, and lots of history.

The Belfry

The Provinciaal Hof.

Market square

Market square

Canals

Windmills

We went on a walking tour in the rain with a guide from America with an annoying New York accent. We were pointed out lots of cool things and told a lot of trivia about the movie ‘In Bruges’ starring Colin Farrell. One of our favourite things we saw was a dog that sits in a window overlooking one of the canals, all day every day and he is even in the movie!

doggy in the window

Canal selfie 

some good weather

Leah didn't like this

Astrid park

wait till it floods!

We stayed at a pretty cool hostel with a good kitchen and bar. Although the shower situation was pretty average because we had to walk down stairs and through the busy bar to get to the shower block and then hold an overhead chain constantly to keep the water running. Both of our roommates had separately come from Amsterdam. The New Zealand guy was cool and we helped him plan his last couple of weeks with some suggestions on where to visit. The weird old American guy just had a big bag of weed that stunk out our room.

Sunset from our window

Now more on beers from Belgium! The Trappist beer, originally made by monks vary from around 7 to 14 percent alcohol by volume. Leah and I tried some of the local Bruges Trappist beer from the bar in our hostel. Strong stuff! Most were flavoursome but one tasted like it had been mixed with too much vodka. Oh and of course we tried Belgium chocolate! There were plenty of fancy chocolate shops but we went the smart way and bought the same stuff cheaper from the supermarket and not the naughty ones shaped like human anatomy.

one of my favourite beers

Chocolate!

We also visited the oldest pub in Bruges. Built in 1515, it still had lots of old pictures and decoration from its 500 years of existence. We warmed ourselves with lip smacking soup and a beer.

Before we left Bruges we enjoyed some frities one last time before our bus ride into the Netherlands, yum! 

Arvi

out side the oldest pub