For the first time in years, I went on a proper holiday and left the country. I had been desperate to go away, so my family and I decided to go to Bruges. This was a very last-minute decision, but it ended up being one of the best holidays of my life.
Day One
The first day was mostly filled with travelling. It took us most of the day to get to Bruges, but this was actually quite fun so I didn't mind. We caught the Eurostar from London to Brussels, then a train from Brussels to Bruges. It was lovely as soon as we arrived. We dumped our bags at our apartment and went into the city. We did some exploring and also picked up some things for tea. It was a quiet day for us, but we were tired from travelling and we wanted to get up early so we could go do more the next day.
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| The famous Market Square featuring the Bellfort |
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| A bookshop I visited but didn't buy anything from |
Day Two
Day two was filled with what I would call the tourist bucket list. We did the majority of the tourist tick-list on this day. First port of call was to go up the Bellfort. As tiring as it was going up all those stairs it was worth it for the view alone. We were actually very lucky as while we were up there, the bells started ringing and it was nice just to be able to listen to them while appreciating the view. We then went and did another tourist tick-list and went on a canal boat tour. I had wanted to do one of these before we came and was very happy to tick it off my list. We did some more exploring of the main tourist attractions, including the Minnewater aka the Lake of Love before stopping for a quick snack at a cafe. Belgium is famous for its waffles and when in Belgium, you have to have one. They were amazing. I could have died happy at that moment in time. After our pit stop, we continued walking and walked around the outside of the city. We saw some of the gatehouses and finally ended the first part of our day by going up inside a windmill. We then went back to our apartment, had tea before heading out to this nightclub type place run by Bruges only vampire. It's called the Lucifernum, it's like a museum and a bar all rolled into one. It was another bit of good fun and we walked home at night time, meaning we got to see the city all lit up.
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| View from the Bellfort |
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| View from the Bellfort |
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| Canal Boat Tour |
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| Lake of Love |
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| The best waffle I have ever eaten |
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| One of the windmills in Bruges |
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| View from the windmill |
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| Inside the Lucifernum |
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| Bruges by night |
Day Three
We started day three with one of the walks from our book about walks (I'd recommend buying one of these books as you get to go around different parts of the city). We saw some of Bruges theatres amongst other things. This day was filled with visiting lots of Bruges churches. We went to a lot this day. The churches we visited included the Cathedral, the Basilica of the Holy Blood and Our Lady of the Pottery. We also went into one of Bruges bookshops and I got Harry Potter in Dutch/Flemish. I also saw a really cool cat by the Jan van Eyck square. This day was a lot less packed compared to the other day as we were exhausted from the previous day and the weather wasn't great, so we had a chilled day.
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| One of Bruges theatres, sadly under reconstruction |
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| The cool cat I saw by the Jan van Eyck Square |
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| The Basilica of the Holy Blood |
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| A Harry Potter display in Brugse Boekhandel |
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| Our Lady of the Pottery |
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| The Cathedral |
Day Four
As the previous day had been filled with churches, this day was filled with museums. You could get a pass to a list of museums that was valid for three days and as we knew we were going to go to lots, we went and got it. The first museum we went to was called the Groening Museum, this had lots of paintings from Flemish artists. We then went to the Gruuthuse Museum, which had been a medieval mansion before becoming a museum. Finally, we went to Sint Jan's hospital and museum. This had a large collection of medieval doctors items and Memling paintings. We ended our day by visiting the fish market stalls before heading back to our apartment.
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| The Groening Museum |
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| A dog outside the museum |
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| The Gruuthuse Museum |
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| The Sint-Jans Hospital and Museum |
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| The Fish Market |
Day Five
This was our last full day in Bruges, so it was a day filled with all the things we hadn't done and wanted to do. First stop was Astrid Park, which was used in the film In Bruges. We had great fun pretending to act out the scene from the park while nobody was around. We then went to somewhere I had wanted to go which was Books and Brunch, a bookshop cafe place. We didn't actually eat anything, but it had a really nice ambience. After that, we bobbed into a couple of churches before heading to the Frites Museum. It was good fun learning about the history of potatoes and chips, we then had to have lunch there. We did another church and museum before heading back to our apartment to pack. We decided to eat out this night as it was our last night in Bruges. We went to a restaurant that our host recommended to us. The food was delicious, we then waddled back to bed.
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| A cat I saw on route to Astrid Park |
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| Astrid Park |
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| Books and Brunch |
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| A church we visited |
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| Another church we visited |
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| Lunch at the Frites Museum |
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| Tea |
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| The restaurant we ate tea in |
Day Six
Our final day in Bruges. We had accidentally booked to be travelling back on a national holiday in Bruges, so we headed for the train station and spent several hours in said train station before boarding the train home.
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| The view from our apartment |
