1 October 2019

Bye bye Brussels.

I found you interesting but a bit messy. I blame those scooters and bikes just dumped anywhere and everywhere around the city. Not a great look. A bit like your Palais de Justice still wrapped in scaffolding, in fact. Grahame disagrees and thinks I’m being a bit harsh.

We have a date with a P&O ferry in a few days so we are making our way towards the ferry terminal at Zeebrugge.

Fortunately Brugge lies in our path and we have a day or two up our sleeve.

We caught the local intercity train and just over an hour later we were dragging our bags through one of the prettiest places we’ve seen.

Grahame is an “In Bruges” fan and was pretty chuffed when we walked into the main square or Markt. The infamous Belfry looked amazing.

Of course, we had to climb it! All 366 stairs of it. The views and watching the bell ringing system work made the climb well worthwhile.

I was pleased to find our “Evacuation Plan” information on the top deck of the tower, but I’m thinking there are only two options and one of them (which Ken took) would not end well.

We wandered the cobblestone streets to see what we could see.

A quick visit to the bathroom revealed this rather interesting handbasin. And yes the goldfish are real!

The canals surround the town and provide for some very pretty scenery.

We’ve seen a lot of old things in the last four and a bit weeks and today is the first time we actually visited an official “museum”. And it was pretty good. The Gruuthusemuseum was nearby and we accidentally wandered in.

And we liked it! It was in an old Palace of one of the Counts of Brugge. But my favourite part was the view from the balcony.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around, saying “this is beautiful” and moving on to the next beautiful spot.

We may have had a refreshment or two as well. It’s important to be happy!!