"I went to Bruges for a day..."

Bill Bryson begins his three-paragraph overview of Bruges in neither here nor there with, "I went to Bruges for a day." And since my visit to Bruges was completely inspired by these three paragraphs, I figured I should start that way too.

But before we got to Bruges, we realized that just because you have everything all planned out in your head doesn't mean things will flow as smoothly as you hoped!  At our 6am departure we realized our navigation app (that we always use) can't calculate directions across country borders (which made me curse my dependence on technology and wonder why I hadn't printed simple directions as back-up). Soon enough though, we had made our way 30 minutes to the Belgium border and the system started calculating.

Another hour down the road and the oil light came on in the car, threatening our weekend in Belgium once again.  We pulled over in a gas station where mobile phones were barely letting us call out to boyfriend's parents (we were driving his mom's car), and rain clouds were darkening the sky. It still wasn't even 8am; the day wasn't looking promising.  You have got to love the Germans though for always being prepared: boyfriend's mom had a liter of spare oil in the trunk!

Boyfriend fixing our oil problem.

We were back on the road, just an hour behind schedule, and ready to enjoy our day in Bruges! We arrived just before 11am, found free parking at the train station right outside the city and began exploring.  We almost immediately found ourselves on a deserted street, just as picturesque as Bill Bryson had described. And so here I begin my story of Bruges:

On a quaint side street in Bruges.

"I went to Bruges for a day" and it was even more quaint than I expected. We found our way into the city center and visited the tourist information where we purchased a map for 50 cents.  I contemplated not having a map at all, since wandering aimlessly seemed more pleasant and natural, but since we were only there for a day we didn't want to miss anything crucial.

Figuring out what we should see on our map of Bruges.

I'm not the biggest fan of museums, especially when the scenery around town was breath-taking and the weather was clearing up to be a gorgeous day. The chocolate museum and frites museum seemed tempting, but we decided to just stay outside and eat pralines and frites instead to experience the best of Belgium.

One of the hundreds of praline shops in town. Yum!

You read correctly, a frites museum. Did you know frites, or french fries were originally from Belgium?  Well, there are a lot of theories out there about the actual origin, but I like the story popular in Belgium: They used to eat small fish from a river cooked in oil, but one year, when the river froze over, they decided to cut potatoes in the approximate shape of the small fish and fry them instead. So, when in Belgium, make sure to eat some of the delicious frites!

Our frites from a friterie, founded in 1900. Yum!

The tourist were flooding the streets, just as Bill Bryson had mentioned, so later in the day we wandered away from the city center, ventured through the small quaint streets and followed the canals around the city. Boat rides available around the canals seemed like a nice option, but strolling along the empty streets without the loud voice of a tour guide on a microphone was, we think, the best way to explore Bruges (and more budget-friendly).

Overall, Bruges was everything I expected it to be and more. Simply put, it is just a pleasant place to be.  As Bill Bryson mentions, it's hard to imagine that people actually live here and experience this beautiful place on a daily basis. It would be lovely to live in such a place, but for now I am just happy to have spent a day there.  Late in the afternoon we found our way back to our car and headed to the coast to find a campsite. I'll write another entry tomorrow about the rest of our weekend in Belgium. For now I'll show you just a couple more photos of the wonderful Bruges.