Gone walkabout

Its been far too long since I have had a reason to post on here so I'm stretching a little bit the concept of travel blogging by reporting on a short weekend Jaunt but I'm going to take it.

After a morning at work (out in reading) I headed into London to meet my glamorous travel companion for the weekend, the lovely Miss Claire Rice. We met at St Pancras international Train station with enough time to have some lunch before boarding the train to Bruges. We wandered out to some street food trucks, in the blazing sunshine, had a little nose around, decided the queues were too long and we didn't want to eat out in the sunshine sat on the floor anyway and headed back towards the station, we passed a couple of places and were still wondering around when we finally settles on Carlucios for lunch... I only describe this in as much detail as we nearly ended up being late to check in for the train... serves us right for faffing about I guess.

After a quick dash across St Pancras we checked in for the train and got through with plenty of time to spare. I'm not saying that Claire was sulking about not getting Percy pigs from M&S for the journey but her repeated refusal for me to get her some haribo star-mix and then subsequent demolishion of said bag (yes yes I helped) says otherwise. Regardless we were on our way! a direct train to Bruges in under 2 hours! how amazing is the modern world... all month I have been saying how amazing it is that the train goes straight to Bruges...it was a little over an hour and a half into the 2 hour train journey that I finally figured out the train was going to Brussels and not Bruges... Shit

I am normally a fairly laid back and easy going person but I've had some personal stuff going on that has put me a little on edge, even at my best, however, I like to be in control and here I was hammering through the French countryside to a city I didn't know, in a country I'd never been too, with an airbnb host expecting us and the half assed wifi on the train and spotty mobile network signal conspiring to withhold information from me... I was...to put it delicately...on the verge of loosing my shit. Thankfully I had Claire along side me to calm me down and we figured it all out pretty easily in the end, a quick change at Brussels and we would be on a direct train to Bruges and get there only an hour later than expected.

The unexpected transfer had its highs and lows; a quick discussion about the few children that had joined us at our end of the platform resulted in a very mutual decision to go down the other end so we didn't get "stuck in a carriage with a bunch of annoying kids"... the train arrives, a nice empty carriage on a slightly dated but perfectly comfortable train, perfection... Queue an entire class of school children under the age of 10, all with big camping rucksacks and some hilarious expressions on Claire's and I'm sure my face.

Thankfully we had already secure window seats and could attempt to ignore them and soak in the Belgiumish...belgish....belginum... the country side in Belgium and also they left the train in Ghent, which is half way between Brussels and Bruges. Whilst the Countryside in Belgium is pretty similar for the most part to England we did notice a lot of interesting architecture, Brand new bespoke houses, side by side with old rustic brick houses and they complimented each other so well! apart from that it was an uneventful transfer and we got into Bruges a little after 7.30pm.

Walking through Bruges on the way to our Airbnb I knew i was going to like this place. It felt very friendly, quaint and all of the buildings were beautiful. It took us bout 20 mins to walk from the station to our airbnb and that was only because we had to take a slight detour to avoid a square that had been closed off for some sort of musical event. The airbnb was spectacular, the location was perfect, right in the middle of everything and our host was very friendly when we arrived and we didn't actually see her apart from that, we did however wake up both mornings to find fresh orange juice and strawberries had been left outside of our room. The bedroom was spacious with a big bed, plenty of leaflets and a couple of very nice Belgian chocolates left for us, a brand new en suit bathroom provided a couple of showers and we were back out to go exploring (there was also a small kitchen and courtyard but that looked very nice but we never actually used them).

Wondering around Bruges was amazing that evening, at first it was light and we got a good sense of the city, its canals and fascinating buildings and later after dinner in the twinkling evening lights and the spectacularly lit churches and cathedrals made it feel... to steal a phrase from the film In Bruges, feel "like a fucking fairytale"... I have to admit I may possibly have over used this phrase and felt at times my life was at threat from Claire if I continued to use it. Dinner was very nice, we thoroughly got into it, i couldn't wait to get my Mussels and Frites and Claire had a lovely Flemish stew. We wandered the city for hours, being grown ups and taking in beautiful architecture, being children and going for a slide in a park we happened across (which for any fans of the film turned out to be the one where Colin Farrell is stopped from killing himself by the man sent to kill him) and being immature taking photos of an art gallery window which had a selection of brightly coloured gnomes giving the finger! We slept very well that night.

In the morning I was up and out early to go and find the Irish bar I had located in the city prior to flying out that would be showing the fated 3rd and final lions test, in a lovely twist of fate it turned out to be less than 30 seconds away from where we were staying and so I got down there bright and early to find out who would walk away champions of a very exiting tour... for anyone who doesn't know.. nobody won... the whole series was drawn, a good result for the lions but ultimately left everyone feeling flat. After the final whistle and a few seconds of sitting bleary eyed in an Irish bar in Bruges surrounded by Brits and kiwi's alike all looking at each other and trying to figure out how e felt about the result, I decided I had had enough of this surreal scene and went off to find Claire.

We started the day with a walk through the main square, both of us commenting how many more people there were out and about in massive tourist groups and trying to figure out where they had come from and made our way to Boottochten Brugge (the best Bruges boat tour company judging by google reviews) and paid a very reasonable 8Euro each for a 30 minute tour of the canal networks which provided some lovely views after a nervy minute or two when the boat was being loaded and there was a definite feeling between myself and Claire that the boat was going to tip over to the left and our swimming would be put to the test.

After our boat tour it was lunch time and we found a very nice little bistro around the corner which we chose in no small part because a) it was closest b)it didn't look overly crowded in the outside section at the front and most importantly c) all of the waiters were dressed in hilariously camp sailors outfits with not a whiff of irony! a couple of steaks and the worlds strongest G&T for Claire later (this was not how she ordered it just how they chose to measure it), it was time to pay up and continue our adventure, the lovely old waiter who had been serving me handed me the card machine and as I punched in the pin stated "moment of truth, time to find out if you will be doing the dishes?", thankfully the card came up a winner and a resigned waiter stated that he guessed he would be doing the dishes and wished us a lovely afternoon.

Our next stop was the bell tower, somewhere that everyone says you should not miss because of its spectacular views and they are quite right! There is a bit of waiting around at the bottom, as the amount of people that can fit up and down the incredibly steep and narrow staircases is very limited. Despite our playful banter about how much we were dreading the climb to the top (banter.. yea, fat bloke who smokes... I wasn't joking) neither of us would have changed it, I believe it was the boat captain who said "the views are simply breathtaking, but so are the stairs" said it as well as anyone could.

We walked out to see some small windmills on the edge of town, stopped for a lovely coffee on the way back and after a little chill out /siesta headed out into the lovely warm evening in search of dinner and chocolate, this was Belgium after all and to return without having eaten the chocolate is, I believe, a crime. We found a very nice relaxed café/restaurant next to a canal for our final dinner where I had a lovely but very filling fish stew and Claire upon seeing "giant vol au vent" on the menu under mains, said the following "that cant just be a big version of a vol au vent... I mean what would they even serve it with... it cant just be a big version... OK well I'm just gonna order it and see what happens", gotta love that attitude. We had a fun dinner talking about my past life as a film editor, a subject which apparently I've never mentioned to her before! and then went off to walk off dinner and perhaps find a waffle or some ice cream. We settled on some delicious ice cream at a small place just around the corner from the bell tower and after finishing that up realised in quick succession, it was pretty late, we were pretty tired and we had to be up and out relatively early and with that headed back for the last nights sleep in Bruges.

However brief it was, it was absolutely lovely and thoroughly enjoyable and I would highly recommend it as a city to anyone and it has definitely peaked my interest in doing some short trips around Europe... or maybe I should just sack it all off again and get back out on the road hmm....

p.s. the train back to Brussels... get off at Brussels south and not the next stop for Brussels central... no... we didn't, but we came very closeRead more