Bruges is less than an hour by train from Brussels. I got to my B&B (which is not on the town square but only a 15-minute walk) about 1030 but my room was ready.
It’s a lovely room on the top floor of a 3 story canal house. To say the stairs are steep is an understatement. They’re not quite as vertical as a ladder, but not far off.
Someone helped me with my bags. I only have a relatively light rollaboard and my backpack, but I’m lucky I can get myself up the stairs so the help was very much appreciated.
The view from the room is nice. This is a quiet residential street not far from the canal.
Since I had nothing special to do in town, I rested in the room until about 1pm when a miracle occurred…. the SUN CAME OUT!! It was still chilly but everything is so much better when the sun is shining. It didn’t last too long and by 3pm the clouds had rolled back in but a couple hours is better than nothing.
Burg Square is one of the oldest parts of the city.
The other side of the square is the Basilica of the Holy Blood.
By this time is was about 2pm and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so I found a restaurant on the square and stopped in for a bite.
After lunch I walked just a couple of blocks to the largest church in Bruges, St. Salvator’s Cathedral. Since I hadn’t visited this church in my other two trips to Bruges, I popped in for a few minutes. Besides, it’s been 3 whole days since I’ve been in a church, so why not?
St. Salvator’s started in the 10th century as a parish church. After a fire destroyed the church, construction on the current building began in 1127 and continued for a hundred years.
On my way back to the central market, I found some interesting buildings and shop windows.
And because I hadn’t yet had enough sweets today, I stopped for a Belgian Waffle.
I passed a smaller market that had a little entertainment.
By the time I got to the main square market, it was finally getting to be dusk so the lights were starting to come on.
This is the other side of the square.
The booths were a lot of the same things but I thought these were cute.
I really didn’t hang around too long as it was getting pretty dark, the relatively small square was getting very crowded, and I had over 15 minutes to walk home in the dark. In spite of only being out a few hours, I still had over 12,000 steps. I need 3 times more than that to walk off all the chocolate but I guess it’s a start.
I’m only here one night before heading to Antwerp tomorrow. I’ve got a very exciting weekend and Antwerp is the reason I came to Europe. The markets were just a bonus. But I’ll save that story for tomorrow. Night everyone.
I found the architecture on those buildings so interesting. And of course…..the sweets! Oh my! Is their chocolate a milk chocolate or more of a semi-sweet chocolate? Be careful of going up and down that ladder, I mean those stairs in your flat!
The architecture is one of the things I love so much about Europe. I’m not sure the kind of chocolate. Some of the bars are identified as either light or dark but I’m not sure about the individual pieces. I only made necessary trips up/down those stairs. The challenging part was bringing the rollaboard back down. I took one step at a time, bringing the bag down behind me. Needless to say, I was glad when I got to the bottom.
Love the pics of Bruge and Brussels. We’ve never visited either but I think we have two additions to our travel bucket list. The light show at Grand -Place in Brussels is phenomenal.
Yeah….it was pretty cool. I think my favorite market, though, was Vienna. The town hall market was incredible. Dana Winner concert is tonight; can’t wait. But ready to go home on Tuesday.