I was really enchanted by the little city, which looked like something out of the pages of a fairytale storybook, and I always hoped to return one day. And since getting together with Claudio, who had never been to Europe when I first met him, I'd always wanted to show him Bruges, as to me, it's really such a quintessentially European place.
So after our wonderful few days in Paris, we took the TGV to Lille, followed by trains to Kortrijk and then Bruges, arriving in around three hours, without having to show our passports once (I love train travel on the continent!).
It was already dark and quite rainy when we arrived, so we weren't sure about going in to the city centre that evening. But after settling into our hotel and eating some (surprisingly good!) pasta at the train station, it had stopped raining, and we could hear some kind of event going on in a big square nearby, so we decided to go and investigate.
It turned out to be an outdoor Christmas party that was being broadcast on TV! We ended up staying there for a little bit to listen to the music.
We then went for a bit of a wander and eventually found ourselves in the city centre after all! The traditional buildings were all lit up with Christmas lights, and there was a Christmas market in Grote Markt, the city's main square. It really felt like the most Christmassy place I'd ever been to!
The next morning, we walked into the city via a different route, passing by the Poertoren (Gunpowder Tower) and Minnewater Park. I remember really liking this part of this city on my previous visit, as it's so peaceful and picturesque.
Of course, being in Belgium, we had to have waffles for our breakfast!
Our first bit of sightseeing of the day was at the Béguinage, or Begijnhof, a circle of traditional white houses that make up a little community where religious women live. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful places to see in Bruges.
We spent the rest of the morning wandering through the picture perfect streets of the city.
As Belgium is one of the world's chocolate capitals, it seemed only right to take the opportunity to pick up some Christmas presents from one of the many little chocolate shops in the streets of Bruges. As there are so many chocolate shops, it was hard to choose which one to go to! So we turned to Rick Steves' Europe (a travel programme we used to watch a lot on YouTube, back when we had our apartment in Santiago) in order to decide. As Rick Steves went to Dumon Chocolatier in his episode about Bruges, we decided to go there too. It turned out to be a good choice, as the Christmas presents ended up being well received!
After our shopping, we went over to Rozenhoedkaai (Rosary Quay), which is where you find arguably the most picturesque views in the entire city.
We also visited the Basilica of the Holy Blood, an unusual-looking church where you can see a tube that supposedly has the blood of Jesus Christ inside it.
By this point in the day, it was definitely time for some lunch, so we bought some chips and mayonnaise (another Belgian classic!) from a van in Grote Markt.
Afterwards, we decided to go on a boat trip along the canals, which is one of the nicest ways to see the city. Because there were quite a lot of people on the boat, it wasn't ideal for taking pictures, so we mostly just sat back and enjoyed the views.
After the boat tour, we went to a balcony that Claudio had noticed near Rozenhoedkaai. This is another beautiful viewpoint over the city's canals.
By now, we were very cold and it was starting to get dark. So we decided to go to a bar for some Belgian beer! Claudio chose a chocolate-flavoured one and I chose a cherry-flavoured one! I don't normally like beer that much, but these ones were very tasty, and it was nice to be inside the cosy bar.
We chose to end the day by visiting the Historium, Bruges's history museum. This isn't a normal history museum - it's a fully immersive experience, where you enter into a story about medieval Bruges, and learn about the city's history in the process. It's very fun and educational at the same time.
To make it even better, once you've gone round the museum, you can go out on a balcony overlooking Grote Markt. The views are absolutely amazing!
It was the perfect end to a lovely 24 hours in Bruges!
Although for Claudio, Bruges was never going to wow him in the way that Paris did, he still enjoyed our time in the city. What I liked about it was that it was a bit more of a relaxed time than our time in Paris (and later, Amsterdam), because we could just walk everywhere, and we didn't have to book anything in advance. It was nice to be spontaneous and just enjoy all of the city's sights, as well as its food and drink.
But the next morning, it was already time for us to move onto our next country! We had an exciting couple of days in the Netherlands coming up...
