Bruges

A few days ago I went to Bruges, in Belgium, and I wanted to tell you about the trip and about the city in general.

The first thing I have to do is recommend that if you go to Bruges is arrive early and get the train at the first thing in the morning... Why? Because the train takes 2 and a half hours so to make the most of the day the best thing to do is catch the first train to Bruges and get the last one back.

Another option, is if you want to stay over in Bruges, which most people do. There is a youth hostel I think it is called Hihotels or something like that, and it costs 16 euros if you reserve a room and 20 if you don't reserve. This is the price for one night, and as you know, at a youth hostel you will probably be sharing a room with 5 other people, but it is worth the price (and it looks good from what I saw! )

So when you get to Bruges, the first thing you should do (like in all cities) is buy a map at one of the information points so you can get your bearings, but to be honest we didn't use the map much because we just went we fancied and didn't really go to all of the main points in the city haha!

A little after leaving the train station (by the way, inside the station there are cash points where you can get some money out in case you have forgotten to withdraw some cash before you arrived, I'm telling you this because another time, when we went to Hasselt, the only cash point we saw was ING, and the minimum you could withdraw was 100 euros... ) you will come to a bridge with some impressive views of the river/canal, which I especially liked. It is worth taking lots of photos as a reminder.

If you keep walking you will get to two towers, one is the Cathedral and the other is the church.

The cathedral is amazing, it looks even bigger from the inside. At the entrance, there is a sculpture of Jesus Christ and as you go inside, there is a main hallway where you can stand and observe all the beautiful detail. Just behind you, there is a huge statue and an organ which are both beautiful.

At the back of all of this there are some rooms/compartments that contain tombs, I don't know if they are for anyone in particular because everything there was in Flemish so I couldn't understand. But they were visually very impressive because they are below ground level and they are decorated accordingly to the period. Further down I have attached a photo so you can get an idea of what they look like.

It was weird to see that the people I went there with (who were from Greece) were super impressed, because they told me that they don't have many cathedrals in their home country, and that this was the first cathedral they had ever seen. This was unbelievable for us because in Spain we have one in every city!

(Of course inside the Cathedral, we took photos without the flash! )

If you go to the main street, you will see that it is really busy and there are tonnes of shops, mostly clothes, some commercial stores in general and of course the famous chocolate shops.

Every two steps you take you will come across a chocolate shop, because as you already know, Belgium is a city famous for its chocolate. I don't actually know why it is full of chocolate, well actually I do, it's because there are so many tourists here!

When you get to the city square, you are going to be amazing. It is the biggest square I have seen in any Belgian city, it's definitely impressive. And at night, it is all lit up so definitely worth seeing.

From this square, you can climb up the tower and get a birds-eye view of the whole city. We couldn't because we didn't have enough time but I'm sure that the views are great.

I have to recommend that you try the strawberries and chocolate that they sell in a shop in the square and the waffles, delicious! You won't be able to resist!

Later on we found a place to eat outside of the square but we realised it was quite expensive to eat there so we went searching and were surprised that we could not find a single McDonalds! We did see a fast food restaurant that looked similar but it didn't do burgers and it wasn't McDonalds at the end of the day, unbelievable hahaha!

In the end we went to a Greek place because we found it by chance and we were with some Greek people who were able to advise us what to order. Greek food, like I have already told you in another post, is very similar to Turkish food. We eat a type of kebab but full of a really tasty meat, yoghurt and potatoes (nothing like the ones you get in Spain). Of course there was also lettuce, tomato etc. but I didn't have any on mine because I don't like vegetables! And it was honestly so tasty, I definitely recommend it.

In the afternoon, we decided to take a ride on the little boats there, like the Gondola's in Venice, really cute. The trip was a little expensive because it cost 7. 60€ and it only lasted 15 minutes... It was quite dear but worth it because you get to see the whole city from the different canals and they tell you all about the city's history (they told us in English but there is the option of other languages but it depends on the other nationalities in the boat). It is beautiful, and if you go with your partner it's really romantic so I recommend you to go in a couple if you can.

Then we wanted to go get a beer in a place just next to the canal that looked really cool but it was shut. A lot of places here shut at 18:00 so went to find somewhere else in another part of the city. I have to say that it wasn't the nicest of experiences because the bar owners were super rude, you can't even imagine, but good when you don't know what they are saying.

In the end, we went to the train station to catch the 21. 35 train that was arriving in Hasselt at midnight because we'd done enough for the day!

Be careful with the trains because some of them break off from each other and each carriage travels in another direction so make sure you get on the right one.

The ticket without a 'Go Pass' card costs around 20€ for a return, and with the card it costs 10€, so as you can see, it is worth getting a 'Go Pass', as you will almost definitely save money.

Another small thing, the trains don't have toilets, as far as I know anyway, so I recommend that you use the bathroom before you get on because it is a long journey.

I hope to go back to this city, so I can tell you more about it!

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Photo gallery