Bruges/Brugge, Belgium

Hi there! Just as I said I was becoming more stationary, we took off for a day trip to Bruges!

Today we woke up for the first time ever in my new apartment!! Our sleeps were good and we were ready to start exploring Belgium! I live about a 30-minute walk to the train station so our day started with that and a coffee on the way! When we arrived at the Ghent train station, there was some sort of cute framers market happening where we got some croissants for the train ride! Also at the Ghent train station, was the biggest bike parking lot I’ve ever seen (pictured here). Well, that’s until I saw the bike parking lot on the far side of the train station (not pictured here, I forgot to take a photo, sorry!). But I guess biking is a HUGE thing here!

The train from Ghent to Bruges is only about 40 minutes and I have a feeling that this trip is one that I will be taking multiple times during my stay here. Walking out of the Bruges train station and into the city is something I can only equate to something from fairytales. It is absolutely magical.

We walked through the park along “Love Lake”, which actually has an odd superstitious history but has somehow transitioned to a romantic location. We saw our first of many bridges for the day and stopped to admire the medieval buildings, the cute cafes, the swans and the horse-drawn carriages.

The first part of our day here was an eye-opening self-guided tour of all the beautiful buildings that we could find. Our walk was stopped many times by sites that we just had to take photos of!!

Bruges is also the most “touristy” place we’ve been to so far but I’d also say the most beautiful. Every street we walked in had obvious tourists, along with chocolate shops, breweries, waffle stands and gorgeous architecture. Also, I'm realizing now that the photo I'm choosing to show the cool "touristy" streets has no tourists on it but believe me, there were a ton of tourists. Apparently, 8 million tourists come through Bruges in a year.

We stopped for a drink (non-alcoholic this time hehe) in the town square to watch the world go by in the sun while deciding our next steps. The little cafe we chose was right in the market square so this was our view of the "Belfry Tower".

After reading some travel guides about the area, we knew that a 30-minute river cruise through the canals was well worth it! Also, a fun fact about the boat cruises is that there are 5 operators with 4 boats each that have to offer the same tour at the same price at the same time interval every day, all regulated by the Bruges government. I’m quite impressed that they were about to set up this system and maintain it!! But that’s just a fun fact and not actually important to the story. The river cruise was super nice and took us under a few of the 42 historic bridges found in Bruges. We got to see some of the old hospital, some churches and some beautiful restaurants from the water before coming back on land.

At this point exploring had us a little bit hungry so we had a snack before continuing the adventuring. Kimmy had a Belgian waffle (so Belgian!!) and I had an ice cream before we wandered around Bruges a bit more.

We then went on a 2.5-hour guided walking tour to learn about some of the incredible buildings we had been seeing. We learned lots of stories about all kinds of different topics so here are a few of my favourites.

1. The Half Moon Brewery.

This is one of the many many breweries in Belgium and specifically in Bruges. They have expanded a lot over the last couple of years and their brewery is no longer big enough to bottle in-house. So they used to have trucks come pick up the beer in vats, drive it out of the city and bottle it there. However, the owner decided that it impeded the visitors' ability to come to the brewery and it was damaging to the road so he hired an engineer to come up with another solution.

They settled on building a 3.3 km long pipeline UNDER this MEDIEVAL city. And by under, I mean THIRTY-SEVEN METRES under this Medieval city (in some parts). Is that not crazy?

Also, the beer here was good. Looking at the pipeline was cooler.

2. The reason for the swans in Ghent

Ok so our tour guide did a really good job discussing the whole history and here is a website with a lot more of the details that I will give here (in case you are interested): http://thismustbebelgium.com/the-swans-of-bruges-a-sentence-for-life/#:~:text=Maximilian%20decided%20to%20impose%20an,101%20white%20swans%20for%20eternity. and I'm sure there are many other websites with the story.

But here is my very brief version:

There was a tyrant named Maximilian From Austria who was a real bad dude to the people of Bruges. He taxed them heavily, took their children to force them to work, dictated all sorts of random things, imprisoned innocent people, etc. And not surprisingly, the people of Bruges didn't like this. So a couple of them gathered together to devise a plan to get revenge on Maximilian. They decided that the next time Maximilian visited, they would kidnap him and hold him prisoner while they tortured and killed all 32 of Maximilian's friends and colleagues from his ship. They did this and actually tortured and murdered Maximilian's best friend Langhals (translates to 'long neck'). They decided that I would be going too far to kill Maximilian and this might start an actual war so they gave Maximilian back to Austria, for ransom, and asked him very nicely to not retaliate. But Maximilian, instead of unleashing the full force of his army, decided that he would impose an eternal punishment on the city of Bruges and force them to always have at least 32 swans in the city. He chose swans because of their long necks and this would force the people of Bruges to be reminded of what they did, particularly to Langhals.

Doesn't seem like too bad of a punishment. Oh but then Maximilian came back, dictated that they aren't able do trade anymore, aren't able to build any more buildings, or really generate any money at all. So the city went broke and half of the citizens left. I guess that is a pretty bad punishment. But at least the cool buildings are still there! (Including the one that Maximilian was kept in!!)

After our walking tour our brains were full and our stomachs were empty so we stopped at the Half Moon Brewery to have a beer and also to join into our monthly family Zoom call. We caught up with the rest of my family and then headed to dinner in the “old fish market”. We had a delicious dinner then walked back through the main square on the way back to the train station to make it back home to Ghent.

The train system overall worked for us today (yay!) and we were happy to be home after our busy day of exploring!