I arrived into Brugges relatively early in the morning after getting the early Eurostar from Paris to Brussels and then managed to get another train to Brugges.
I say managed to get that next train as it was a bitch to try to work out where I was going, there are quiet a few platforms at Brussels Midi station and no really good signage. The departures board don’t list all the stops and they don’t necessarily list the end stop. I did manage to find boards with all the departures on them group according to time although I discovered this after I had randomly went up a platform to have a look and it turned out it was going to Brugges, along with some other places. So back to the departure boards if you go to them and look at whatever time you are near so say it was 10.15am look at the board that has 10am -11am on it and then browse through the list of names of places until you see the place you want to go to, AKA Brugges for me then beside that will be the time the train leaves, the time it arrives into each destination it stops at and the platform number. Kind of easy once you know what the deal is but getting in nice and early and then hearing announcements in both French and a language I soon discovered was Dutch and nothing in English at all had me very confused.
Anyway once I arrived at the Brugges train station or Centrum as they call it I couldn’t for the life of me work out the bus system and for some reason decided it was too hard to work it out and instead decided to walk. Yes I can be a retard at times… Anyway there was a tonne of snow which made it interesting and a bit slippery but about 30minutes later I had made it to my hostel, checked in and sorted my stuff out.
First impressions of Brugges is that it is a very pretty little town, and it is very little as well. There was no need for me to stay two nights although it was nice being able to relax a lot and not have to rush off to check out sights all the time. By the time I was all sorted and had been for a walk to see what I could see near the hostel it was almost dinner time so I stopped a supermarket to get a baguette, meat and pesto to make dinner and settle in for the night to defrost and do some research as to what I could do in the places I have left to visit.
The following day I had the whole day to explore so went for a walk along the ring road and saw some of the remaining windmills that sit along this road and then wandered aimlessly for an hour or two just seeing what I could see and ended up deciding that I would go up the Belfry to check out the view from up the top.
This was the single most scariest experience of my life, the stairs spiral up the Bell tower and are very narrow and rickety and also very icy given that there was snow everywhere, there is also only one way up and one way down which made it interesting when other people were trying to come back down as you were holding on for dear life to let them past the continuing on your way.
I almost backed out and went back down to the bottom on more than one occasion as I have a crazy fear of heights, not crazy as in it’s a crazy fear to have, crazy as in a really really bad fear, I don’t even like going up and down escalators that’s how bad it is. I gave myself a good talking to and kept saying in my head it’s fine just keep going, one foot in front of the other and get to the top and I’m glad I did go up in the end as it really was a beautiful view. Once again it was crazy cold up the top and it’s not fully enclosed so the wind sweeps through so needless to say I didn’t stay up there long, got a few pictures and got out of there as quickly as I could, which was pretty darn slow!
Brugges is a beautiful city and I can see why so many tourists go there, however I can also see why they tend to come in the morning and then leave via train at night, there isn’t really that much to see. Next up Brussels…