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Bruges: A Fairytale City

May 19th, 2011 nmmari12

Winding canals, beautiful flowers, colorful houses, mounds of waffles, elegant swans and endless chocolate. Where can you find all of these things? Hint: the answer is not Disneyworld…but rather Bruges, Belgium. While it may contain a similar sense of magic and wonder that Disneyworld provokes, Bruges also has a very extensive and rich history, culture and cuisine. Last Saturday I hopped on a plane and found myself four short hours later in the Amsterdam airport, greeted by Amanda (the England one) and after a quick catch up conversation, we hopped on a train headed towards Bruges. Ten minutes into the train ride we were informed that we were on the wrong train, and after getting kicked off the train (I felt like such a rebel), paying 16 euros and waiting another 2 hours for the next train…we made it to Bruges. So tip for future study abroaders…or travellers in general….double check that you are on the right train before you board. But hey, at least we didn´t end up in Poland, although that would make for a very exciting blog!

Once we arrived in Bruges we walked around, ate a full dinner and explored the beautiful city at dusk. Bruges is a fairly touristy city (especially during the day) so I felt quite lucky to have the opportunity to explore the city at night and it felt as though Amanda and I were the only tourists in town! The next day, we woke up early and ventured into the center to have a wonderful breakfast of pancakes! Yum! We then walked up and down this one street several times, going into all the different chocolate stores where we would be treated to free samples or truffles for 50 cents each. After we lost count of how many chocolate we had ingested we decided that we reached our limit. Next we went on a lovely boat ride through the canals, which was a great way to see the city. After eating legitimately tons of chocolate and sitting on a boat for 30 minutes, we decided to climb the clock tower, which included several hundreds of narrow, scary steps. After panting and practically falling down the steep passageways, we made it to the top and the views were stunning. After walking through ¨chocolate row¨ and eating a waffle and fries, we walked back to the train station and caught a train (thankfully the correct one) back to Amsterdam. Bruges was a wonderful and gorgeous city, and I would highly recommend it to anyone! It relaxed me entirely and truly appears as though it is out of a fairytale.

Stay tuned as I am about to post all about my adventures in Amsterdam!

Sorry 90% of this post is about food… 🙂

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