Brugge

 

A beautiful morning for our last port of call. A bit cool to start, about 14C, but sunny. We have an earlier tour, 8:30am start. A quick breakfast and down to the lounge to the meeting spot. It’s about a 30-minute drive from the port of Zeebrug into Brugge. The bus drops us at the south end of town, and we start our walking tour. Our group is 30 people, but they have the whisper sets so easy to hear the guide at all times.

Brugge is such a beautiful medieval town with its churches, lovely buildings, gardens, narrow streets and canals. After walking for about an hour, we had a canal boat tour for about 45 minutes. It’s nice to have the views both from the water and from the streets. After our boat ride we continued our walking tour for about another hour, going to the Markt at the centre of town. This is a large square surrounded with impressive buildings. There are lots of stores selling lace, waffles and chocolate amongst other souvenirs.

We then walked back through the streets to a café where we had coffee or hot chocolate and a Belgian waffle. The waffle was delicious, light and crispy. Afterwards our guide was going to take us back into the centre of town to a shopping street. But several of us opted instead to go across the street for a beer. The bar offered a taster of 12 beers, so it was perfect for the 5 of us. We sat outside, but the interior of the bar had a ceiling covered with money, panties and bras! I did pop into a couple of nearby shops to buy some chocolates and a sample of lace. We met the rest of the group as they returned from the centre and started to walk back to the bus. Apparently 2 are missing, but we can’t figure out who. Hope they make it back to the ship!

We arrived back to the ship by about 2pm. It's much cloudier, and looks like it might rain. Unfortunately it’s time to start packing.





















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