Put simply, Rick Steves was right about Bruges. We borrowed his guidebook from our Amsterdam hotel one morning, and he said it was a tourist hotspot. However, once the daytrippers leave after the early-bird special dinner, the town’s character changes. If you’ve ever been in a port town when a Carnival Cruise docks for the day, you’ll know exactly what it was like.
We had our first real meal (vs just snacks, appetizers, beer, wine, etc) out last night and it was a delicious vegetarian-egyptian casserole dish. I had it with pita bread, but Liz opted for the freites (fries). Good call on her part, apparently it’s a speciality or something. Mayonaise? They… ummm… drown ’em in that… er…. “stuff”.
Then a walk around town at about 10:00 and it was still light. Weird and large time zone that apparently spans all the way to Berlin. Heard some music and joined a parade that was headed by a pretty thumpin’ brass band. Not sure what their final destination was, but we heard them retreat home at about 2am.
The only touristy thing we really did in this town, except for food and drink, was climb the belltower. Not sure that was worth the price of 4 local Belgian Trippel beers.
Overall a nice stopover on our way to Paris, but 1/2 a day was plenty.
Did the climb wear off 4 beers worth of calories? Catching any of that little bike race going on over there, or do we have to stay in non-spoiler mode til you get home?
We will definitely have to revisit the film; I can only imagine how great it has been for Bruges. We need a cult hit set in Sheboygan about frying out. We are catching the TdF live here so no worries about spoilers. Hope you all are getting out on some great rides!