Beautiful Bruges

Up early again this morning and checked out of my hotel after breafkast.  Then headed to the Antwerp train station and put my bag in the locker for the day. Jumped on the train to Bruges and arrived 1.5 hours later.  Found the info centre, got a map and set off.  Decided to just wander at a leisurely pace and photograph what I saw...

Bruges is the Capital of Belgium and located in the North. The historic city centre is a Unesco World Heritage site. Along with other canal based cities like Amsterdam it's known as the Venice of the North. It was very impressive and lovely houses with cobblestoned streets.

Brightly coloured doors...

St Saviour's Cathedral. To get to here I was told to just walk toward the spire and eventuallly I'll find it.  I did indeed. 

Very impressive inside...

This is the spire of the Church of Our Lady which wasn't far from the first one...

Equally impressive inside, but under restoration..

Outside weary tourists were resting their feet. I loved the trees being trained to grow along wires.

 

I carried on walking around, but not always sure what I was seeing.  Couldn't find this one on a map!

The spire again of the Church of Our Lady...

I decided to take a friends advice to do a half hour trip on the canal, which would allow me to see more than I would in 3 hours of walking. She was absolutely right...  It was a great tour - but even though I had an English boat - I couldn't hear anything as I was at the back!

Back up on land again-  I wandered around the shops. Every second one was chocolate. That's the Belfry in the distance.

I decided to walk along the canal where the boat had taken us, just to get a few photos. It's a really pretty place.

The reason I wanted to was to get this photo of this amazing window with the dog curled up on a cushion. What a life - I would trade in an instant! So long as I didn't have to eat dog food!

I headed up to the main square to find an organ grinder..

Gorgeous Square...

Decided to stop and have a glass of champagne and rest my foot! Cheers!

While sitting and drinking I realised that if I didn't scarper, I'd miss my connection back to Amsterdam, so rushed back to the train station and got there with just two minutes to spare!  Fortunately the distances aren't great!  On the way to the station though I took some grab shots...

Waiting at the station...

I then managed to get my bag out of the locker and find the correct platform for the train to Amsterdam.  I think I'm really getting hte hang of trains now!  Arrived back in Amsterdam about 8pm. What a great 3 days - Belgium and Luxembourg are fabulous.