Brugge (The Holiday Part V)
Brugge (Bruges) is to Brussels (Bruxelles), what hot is to cold, what rock is to pop and what heaven is to hell. Travelling from Brussels to Brugge is like a lovely holiday oasis in the middle of a desert, only a stone’s throw from Brussels (1hr by train), everything about it is like what you’d expect of a lovely holiday destination out of the big city.
The second we dropped our bags, we raced straight down the local pub (next door to the Coin-Op we were washing our clothes at) and dug into some tasty Belgian beer. Belgium is to beer, what Australia is to wine (blasphemy I know, but I’m biased… France is great too) and I mean that. For 2.5 Euros, this place could buy you a pint of Quak (8% Belgian Beer that comes in a test tube), 9% Westmalle Triple or a Duval (arguably Belgium’s most popular export beer).
Quak - Killer Beer in a Test tube
Orval, another -10% (just)
A couple of these put me into a very happy place, you can imagine what I was like by the time our clothes were clean. After we finished with the laundry, we went straight back out to the local beer house recommended to us by Monique, the owner of the Bread and Breakfast we were staying in. It was called Cambrinas, and its specialty was over 400 different types of bottled Belgian beer. Yes, that’s right, 400 different ones, a beer lover’s heaven.
Brugge has a lot of history, nice cobblestoned roads and a couple of fantastic looking main squares which literally laugh at that of Grand Place in Brussels. Some points of interest are the church containing the blood of Christ (apparently), Notre Dame, its Windmills and any of the other sites you can see from a cruise taken down one of Brugge’s many Canals.
I would definitely recommend Brugge, out of everything I saw in Belgium. For a city of just over a 100,000 people, there’s more to see, more going on and its at least tenfold nicer than its capital city of Brussels. A must see!
