Lazy days alongside the canals of Bruges
We were nearing the end of our trip when we arrived in the enchanting city of Bruges. Our Eurail pass was spent. Our hostel card tattered. Our guidebook was a few crumpled pages. Our days in Europe were numbered. Soon we would make our way across the English Channel to Point B on our map: London.
If Bruges had been at the beginning of my trip I would have taken more photos. The city is beautiful, in a fairytale kind of way – the gingerbread buildings, the swans gliding on dreamy canals, medieval bridges and cobbled lanes, and flowers overflowing everywhere. We stayed three nights in a comfortable youth hostel a short stroll from the city centre.
Our days were leisurely. We even stopped to smell the roses (with our travelling friend Rich who we met in Luxembourg). Sarah and I had registered for the Quasimodo tour, a bus tour to Flanders Fields and the sites and monuments from World War I, but it was cancelled. Not enough people registered for the tour that day. We only needed six.
The cozy bar at the youth hostel was a nice place to relax and chat with fellow travellers. I was told there was a pub in Bruges that reportedly served 300 kinds of beer. I would have scouted it out, but it happened to be closed. The varied selection of Belgium beers at the hostel bar was a fine consolation.
We were pretty chill on these last touring days, taking time to sunbathe on the grass and plan the final leg of our journey.
” … it was a nice lazy day. We walked around Bruges, had some soup, relaxed by a canal on the grass and bought truffles, lots and lots of truffles!”
Excerpt from my journal entry for Bruges
Chocolate truffles also featured heavily on our agenda. The intention was to take some home to Canada. We bought a weighty amount of these delicious rich chocolates. With only a week remaining before our flight home, there should have been plenty.
No truffles made it on the plane.
This is one entry from my 1992 European backpacking trip with my friend Sarah. If you want to start at the beginning, please check out The journey starts in Nice.
