A Quick Trip to Bruges

This half term we managed to slip in a quick trip to Bruges and a supermarket shop in France (more in another post).  We'd been hoping to go away for longer, somewhere in this country, but OH was very busy and couldn't get away, so we decided to hop over the channel and combine a pre-Christmas hypermarket shop with a bit of sightseeing in Belgium.

We caught the ferry from Dover to Dunkirk on Wednesday afternoon, reaching Bruges about an hour's drive away at about 7pm.  We had a bit of struggle to actually find our way into the historic centre by car due to the traffic system, but once in it didn't take us long to find our small apartment, where we were staying for just one night.  The apartment itself was lovely, very compact and bijou, but more than adequate for our very short stay and very well equipped.

Here's a few pictures.

As you can see, it had a bit of a Moroccan theme going on with the lighting and the lovely courtyard just outside the door reminded me of the rhiads we stayed in in Morocco a few years ago.  This was our small but perfect kitchen

and OH and I had a bed up in this mezzanine, which was a bit hairy when you needed to descend the stairs in the middle of the night to go to the toilet.

Little Bird's bed was a sofa bed in the living area.

We headed out in the evening to eat and do a bit of sightseeing.  The town looked lovely all lit up at night and some of the shops were still open. 

I had never visited Bruges before and was very pleasantly surprised at how much there was to do and see.  I knew that they were quite famous for their Christmas markets, but unfortunately, the Christmas markets had not yet started, so we didn't get a chance to see them.  There was, however, this Christmas shop, although we didn't go in.

After breakfast the following morning at the hotel that owned the apartments, we headed into the centre of town for a morning of sightseeing.  There were lots of lovely lace shops

and chocolate shops

in the town and many of the buildings were beautiful with very distinctive Flemish architecture. 

 

 

Whilst OH headed up the belfry (all 366 steps of it!),

Little Bird and I checked out the Chocolate Museum here.

It was an interesting little museum charting the history of chocolate and it's uses throughout the ages.  We also got to see a chocolate making demonstration and taste the chocolates which was definitely worth waiting for.

We had a lovely morning sightseeing, but as the day wore on it became a very busy place, probably because it is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  We really enjoyed our stay here and it was definitely worth a visit.

Here are a few more photos from our visit to give you more of a taste of the city.

I loved this statue which made me smile, as it looked like it was doing a plank.  (An exercise I do regularly in aerobics classes).

We also watched herons fishing in the canal here and swallowing whole fish in one go.

 

Has anyone else ever visited Bruges?