Bruges - A Walk Into The Fairytale Town

Dear readers, here goes the next pick from my Europe Travel – Bruges. This is a very famous city in Belgium known as Venice of the North for its picturesque canals. You will understand this once you take the 30-minute canal ride in Bruges.

After seeing places in and around Amsterdam, when we asked our customers or contacts in office, which is the best place to visit next. Most of them recommended us to take this Bruges tour. They call it Brugge in Dutch.

We booked this tour with the same tour group since we had traveled with them earlier to Dutch Countryside. Reporting time at the main office in Amsterdam Central was at around 9 am in the morning. Without any delay, we started on time with our fellow travelers and another enthusiastic tour guide. Travel duration by bus to Bruges is around 3 hours. We reached Bruges at around 12 PM.

We got down from bus and started following our guide. As we started walking, it suddenly started pouring. We took out our umbrellas now and started our tour. While Dutch countryside was a different landscape altogether, Belgium has its own beauty defined in another way. You will come across lot of postcard-worthy scenes as you walk across this fairy-tale town.

As we entered the city gates, we first came across “Lake of Love” with many Swans swimming about.

We took a short break here and started walking into the city. We passed by some restaurants and our guide told us that Belgian Beer “Brugse Zot” is very famous here and a must try for beer lovers.

We crossed few streets and finally reached the tall standing Church Of Our Lady. Our guide said, he would wait for us at this spot in the evening to pick us back to the bus. Therefore, we decided to see this church later in the evening and cover the main spots first. Moreover, we did this mistake L.

We continued walking across the narrow streets passing through beautiful canals and we could spot Bruge’s famous landmark – Belfry from distance. 

We decided to see this also later since our guide said that he would take us to the Markt square, explain us the things to do/eat/explore on our own and return.  

Burg Square – We first reached Burg Square which is just around 50 meters from the Markt Square. This is one of the most beautiful buildings of Bruges as it represents a variety of architectural styles. This place believed to be the political and religious centers of the region. It is quite a magnificent building so you cannot cover it in one frame. You will need to take pictures from different angles to cover this.

Markt Square of Bruges is the main square of this town. Standing at the center of this square, you can see the tall standing Belfry, cafes, Belgian chocolate shops and horse drawn carriages pass by. By the way, this place is car free. You will not find any vehicles around. You can find people on bicycles though.

Lunch Time - We were tired of walking were literally starving. Our guide suggested us to try Mussels, which is very famous here in one of the restaurants. Without any second thought, we walked into the restaurant and ordered it. Undoubtedly, it was very delicious and tasty. We were actually craving to eat something hot in that rainy weather and the fries really added as an additional supplement to this.

After delicious lunch, luckily rain stopped. Now we had next 4 hours to explore this town on our own.  Our first stop was at Belfry - Bell tower right at the Markt Square. This was truly splendid. There are steps to go up the tower in order to see a panoramic view of the town but there was big queue. People were literally walking at snail speed. Hence, we decided to opt that out and just clicked pictures on the outside.

Since we had less time to explore this town, we decided to take Canal boat ride next. In Europe, the best way to explore any city is to take canal boat ride. Lot of benefits– your body gets rest after walking, very informative (you get to know the history of the place), you can cover all those places which you cannot while waking and finally click pictures at ease. We had realized this in Amsterdam itself.

Canal Ride: We quickly got tickets (10 Euros for 30 minutes) for the canal ride and it was cash only. There was a queue but it was moving since they have enough boats for this most popular ride of the town. We got into a boat and an enthusiastic guide greeted us who was very informative and funny too J. As your journey begins and you pass across each medieval building, the views are stunning and you will get plenty of opportunities to take photos. In fact I clicked more pictures here than in Amsterdam. Highly recommended if you need to get an insight into the town and its history.

Once we came out of the canal ride, our nose glands could smell some nice bakery stuffs. Moreover, to our surprise we saw – Belgian chocolate shop on our left and Waffle shop right in front of us. These two are very famous here and a must try.

We quickly got some Belgian chocolates packed for home and ordered one waffle in waffle shop. Waffle is compulsory try in Bruges.

It was time now and we had to start our run to the Church Of Our Lady. So we started walking as we passed through nice museums, canals, churches reminding us about the fairy tale world which we would read in books or watch in tv during our childhood days.

We made to the Church Of Our Lady on time in order to catch up with our guide. Unfortunately, the church was closed and we were little disappointed. Please note that all the churches and museums close early at around 6 pm. So please plan your day well depending on your places of interest and time.

However, happy that the rest of the day was well spent in this breathtakingly beautiful and picture postcard perfect city of Bruges. If you want to discover the roots of Belgium, this is the city.