Day #5, Brugge Day #1

Frans wrote:

8 Nov '09: We arrived at our hotel around 1 PM and were pleasently surprised by the old fashioned style of our logies. Obviously the place was run by a husband and wife team but it was neat, cozy and comfortable although Maxine and I did find the bed a trifle too hard to our liking but that is a personal thing.

We straight away set off to explore Brugge and for the frist time the weather was really good. The sun was bright, temperature was nice and for once no rain!

Our Hotel was about 20 minutes walk from the heart of Brugge and although the cobblestones were a bit hard on the ankles, we made good time. We arrived at the market square on which the Belfrey tower was situated alongside and Karen and I decided to take on the tower with its 366 steps. Maxine and Yvonne thought the better of it and remained at the bottom looking for postcards to send home.

I'll admit that the climb up the tower was a challenge for me and for sure Karen is the fitter one by a long shot but even with my own extra personal luggage I arrived at the top of the tower a close second and I was pretty proud of myself.

The only way to give a real feeling for the place is through this video, turn up your sound!

Continued on 12 Nov '09 :

This is a short video taken when we reached the top...

Brugge is lovely medieval city that has remained unchanged in many parts as it has been for centuries now. It's specialities are without a doubt chocolates and beer. There is one shop that on his own sells hundreds different kind of beers of many different tastes from white beer to cherry! The chocolate shops are nearly next to each other and you could easily eat yourself extremely sick if you weren't careful. The ladies prooved one thing to me these two days, they are without a doubt shop-aholics but certainly no choco-holics... I on the other hand, just had to try some....

In the afternoon we took a boat tour through the canals of the city in a small boat good for 35 adults or 50 Japanese.... not my words, the guide's!!

The boat trip took about 30 minutes and basicly covered all the canals and most of the bridges, also those where you realy had to make sure you ducked to avoid loosing the skin off the top of your head!

.....and your reward is.... a koala..

As Brugge was the first place on our official Europe tour we started our trails of mini koalas. When we left Perth airport we bought 48 small koalas with an Australian flag in their little clasping claws with the idea we would give a koala to everyone on our tour that we thought deserved it by serving us a good meal or giving us some kind of good service. This way we leave a trail of souvenir koalas through Europe for people to remember us by and who knows, someone who follows this blog might walk into a restaurant or hotel one day and know we've been there before them?

The restaurant that served us dinner that night received our first Koala for great food, service and hospitality. It was called 'De Middenstand' (The Middleclass') and after seperate entrees we all enjoyed the local pheasant. The restaurant was recommended to us by a waiter on the market square who served us tea and coffee that afternoon and who we had been told listened to the name of Dominique but when we asked him the next day turned out to be only answering to the much more common name of Joost?! ....O well. what's in a name anyway....