Bruges (Brugge) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium (yes, their official language is Flemish [something similar to Dutch], not French! but let’s say they are not friends with neither of them historically). Its city centre is surrounded by canals protected by four town gates and it is sometimes referred to as “The Venice of the North” or even “EU’s Oxbridge”.

The best way to get to know the city is by either watching the film “In Bruges” or joining the well known “Free walking tours”. These are now spread all over the world and they are usually run by locals who try to make the tour as interesting as possible so that at the end, you can thank them by a voluntary tip [approx. 5€ pp seems standard]. As a surprise, most free guided tours in Bruges were offered in Spanish (how many Spaniards can there be?) except the one called Legends of Bruges with the meeting point at Grote Markt, which also had an English version. It lasted 2 hours, and, honestly speaking, wasn’t awesome but still “interestingish”. Anyway, below is a recollection of the few fun facts we’ve learnt from the tour or other sources.

1. Bruges is beautiful

Even outside the city centre, you can find nice alleys with very cute terraces.

Nice terrace. Would love to have a drink there. But. Expensive.

2. Also, architectonically rich

Right next to Grote Markt, there is a square called Burg Square which is surrounded by 5 buildings each having a different architectonic style:

• Oude Civiele: early Reinassance.
• Brugse Vrije: baroque.
• Basilica of the Holy Blood:  lower part Romanesque, upper Gothic.
• Gotische Zaal: as it name says Gothic.
• Bruges town hall
• Two others: classic and neoclassic.

Grote Markt itself is quite cool too, apparently, its famous tower Belfry of Bruges increased its height twice to compete against Ghent about who had the highest building. (You can see that the history of rivalry between them is not only about tourists!)

3. And, naturally good

This is Begijnhof (Wendy´s favourite place), considered world heritage, it was once the home of the “beguines” [something like widows who follow a nun life]. Now, it hosts only women (nuns, unmarried Bruges women or tourists [women of course!]); that’s why the place is so pretty, so quiet and flowers are so well taken care. YAY, WOMEN POWER!

3. They like to show off

Do you see the steps that form the roof below? It’s quite typical of Bruges and it was apparently used to show how rich a family is as the more steps, the more bricks a family could afford. Interesting idea to show off to your neighbours, right?

Tell me how many bricks you have and I’ll tell you how rich you are

Another funny rich people’s thing is an interesting hole that you will notice at the side of the door entrance of some buildings. This was previously used to get rid of the dirt stuck to your boots after going outside (which makes sense as, in the old days, people used to throw all their trash/pee/poo by their windows haha!)

Begijnhof

4. They are funny

The sculpture below can be found in the corner of one of the walls on Huidenvettersplein. This very attractive gentleman was quite a wealthy figure back then and he graphically represents what kind of smell this square must have produced: first, as a sheep wool trading place and later, as a fish market.

Cleaning feet tool

5. There are loads of tourists - everywhere!

You will see all sorts of tourists: youngsters (like us I guess!), families, school trips and large tourists groups (especially Chinese and old Americans!). You will find the last groups patiently queuing to get into one of the boat tours [standard price = 10€, reduced = 7€].

Americans, students, Chinese, etc.

6. Finally, Bruges is all about love, beer, well, love for beer

Why love? Let’s better say, efficient love: in this bridge, there have been hundreds of marriage proposals! But what many people don’t know is that this bridge once collapsed and due to the town not being too rich at that time, they were forced to pick up the rocks from the river and the missing ones were filled by the stones from the tombs (does this have a name?)!! (you may still spot the name/number of some old soul on it!)

Proposals and burials

Why beer? With more than (400?) breweries in a city with less than 300,000 inhabitants, we can tell that they do love beer. Plus, did you know that they have recently built a 2-mile beer pipeline!?

Practical info

Beer on the terrace

Do you see the white umbrellas on the right side of the picture? Well, that is Kasteel Minnewater Restaurant where we had our last beer of the day, first-row view to the “Lake of Love” (btw this is a bad translation as the Flemish name originally comes from a fairy tale love story).

Lake of Love

The service was the slowest we have ever seen in our lives, it was self-service but the waiters were of such advanced age that it took nearly 20 minutes of waiting time to order a single glass of “Brugge Zot”(4.60€ for 0.5L) with only 4 people in front of us in the queue!

Brugge Zot, another good blondie

But it was definitely worthy as the sun was shining brightly and our skins were getting some nice Vitamin D!

A night at the hostel St Christopher’s Inn at Bauhaus

Based on our extensive price trend analysis (i.e. 3 min browse of Booking.com),  Bruges was (or at least was on the days we were there) on average 40€ (or, 20€ per person), surprisingly cheaper than Ghent (is it because the majority of people go there only for a day and don’t stay for the night?). As a tip, if you are not too sure what to choose and it’s already late: wait till midnight! The room we were interested in (i.e. the cheapest one) got reduced in Booking.com from 38€ to 34€ in the hostel St Christopher’s Inn at Bauhaus.

This hostel had very nice vibes, it was this kind of young hostel + bar type of place, where reception desk and bar are the same things. At 1 am on a Monday night, there were still many people drinking/shouting/dancing after an apparently successful beer tasting (organised by the hostel every evening). After checking in [remember in Belgium, as many other countries around the area, you need to pay an extra 2€ pp city tax], we joined the crowd (bar was open till 2am) and enjoyed two bottles of Belgian wheat beer called “Hoegaarden” for 4€ (good price for Belgium until you realise the bottle is a 0.25l) and a Hawaiian pizza (frozen, not recommended) for 5€. (They claimed that these were special prices for guests but I don’t think so as the public menu would explicitly write these prices too).

Car parking at Magdalenastraat

Woke up quite early to enjoy the day and not get a parking fine (parking in the historic city centre is free only in the night [between 22pm and 9am if we remember correctly], otherwise around 1.50€ per hour, but max 4 hours stay). In general, apart from the inner city, parking restrictions are also present in the narrow area around it, called the blue zone. However, some parking lots within the blue zone are actually free, such as the one in Magdalenastraat (it seemed to be some kind of “park and ride” location) just 15 minutes walk to the city centre, near Smedenpoort entry gate.

Smedenpoort - one of the last four old city gates of Bruges

##Food One thing we missed out was checking out the breweries and trying the different beers. We did try the “Flemish stew”(typical dish) though, which was great, but prices can go exorbitantly high (ranging from 8€ to 30€)! So yeah, careful with tourist traps!

Conclusion

Bruges is a fantastic place to spend a day (and the night too). It’s small enough to be covered within 4-5 hours and big enough to be rediscovered for a week.