Being a tourist in Bruges

Jan had the ad hoc idea somewhere this week to go citytripping to Bruges over the past weekend. A rather last minute decision that took just a couple of minutes to decide even though we already had quite some things on the agenda on Saturday.  But on the other hand we know Bruges quite well. Both Jan and I have spent countless visits there with our parents when we were young. But we haven't been there anymore in the recent years. The fact that there is a new hotel near the train station where Jan has a high loyalty status, seemed a good occasion to just go.

So after family visits, Jan and the children took the train to Bruges whereas I continued some more family visits and caught up in a much needed reunion dinner with 2 of my friends.

After getting installed, the boys ventured out into the historic city for the first time. They saw a carnaval parade,  befriended the city's famous swans and visited the Frietmuseum (French fries museum). From what I hear, the latter sounds a bit like a tourist trap but the children absolutely loved it and wanted to return the next day. They loved it especially since you could eat some fries at the end. 

I had joined the rest of the family in the hotel again overnight and after a early , yet relax morning we ventured out into this gorgeous city again. It felt great to stroll through the beautiful old streets again and see all the monuments.  It's an extremely touristic city but the tourists have all the reasons to be there and to visit! It's gorgeous...just a pity that 80% of the stores sell chocolate, waffles or beer.

We were lucky to be downtown before the big tourist groups arrived so we profited to get on one of the must do tourist boats before there were any waiting lines. I believe we were on the 2nd boat that was operational that morning, just after their opening hours. The many hours of listening to my mother touring our (international) visitors through the city when I was a child, paid off since the tour guide in the boat didn't tell me anything new.

There were many showers in the air so we were treated with some raindrops but also with some short moments of hail, where the boat captain tried to navigate us quickly under one of the many bridges to wait for the hail to stop as quickly as it came.

After our boat trip we continued our visit by strolling through the city.  The wind was ice cold and painfull. It was hard to belief that the temperature was between 5 - 10 C as it felt like freezing to me.  We went inside for a drink and snack now and then to stay warm.  Nevertheless the sun peeked through and gave us an enjoyable blue sky.

After a few hours of walking and having lunch we felt we had seen it all...Bruges is also a remarkable small city so we returned back to the car and drove home at a very reasonable hour that left us some time at home to cocoon and warm up.

At the belfry there was an ongoing carillon concert, which gave me flashbacks to the time I was allowed to ring a bell during a concert when I was 11.