I don’t know if I’d go to Bruges if I weren’t visiting a bigger city nearby. Known as one of the Venices of the North because of all its canals, Bruges is a great place to spend a day or two in, but I personally wouldn’t make it my main destination if I were on vacation. It’s about an hour from Brussels and about an hour and half from the North of France, which is where I happened to be when we decided to spend the day in this quaint city.
The city isn’t very big–or at least its historic center isn’t very big, so you can basically spend the day just walking around, admiring its medieval architecture, its canals and cuisine. The city offers museums to visit and churches (at the Church of Our Lady you can view Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child). But we kinda skipped all that and just took in the ambiance of this very old city.
The food in Bruges is one of its best features. You’re in Belgium, so of course you’ll find waffles, and fries. There are also TONS of chocolate shops here. We stumbled upon chocolate shaped in the form of boobies and what seemed to be marijuana infused chocolate. Me and the boo had our hearts set on going to a restaurant called Bistro Bruut, but it ended up being closed on Mondays. I was able to peek through the window and see its GORGEOUS decor. It was a shame to not have gotten to eat there but looking at the menu prices in the window, it would’ve cost us a pretty penny. We ended up stumbling on a restaurant called Gruuthuse Hof te Brugge, that turned out to be absolutely great. From all the people packed into its small space, it seemed like a popular venue. The service was mostly friendly and the food was yummy.
I’m pretty sure you can take tours on Bruges’ many canals, but in the winter time, given the weather we opted not to.
On the way back we stopped by Ostend just to get a whiff of the ocean, albeit brief. It was a pretty industrial seaside, with lots of factories nearby (not pictured), but I actually enjoyed that aspect of it.
Side note: my hair here is six days after a twist-out without doing anything at all to it, just because I couldn’t be bothered. (The tangles were already forming lolol). It was about four days after I took this photo.
All in all, if you’re in Belgium or nearby, Brugges and its neighboring cities are definitely worth a pit stop. And if you’re not being lazy tourists like we were, you’ll probably get a lot more out of it than we did, lol. Seriously, there’s lots of recorded history in this city that is certainly worth exploring.
