Me and Mrs BUTR are having a short city break in March. Split between London and Bruges. 2 nights in London, Eurostar, 2 nights in Bruges, 1 more night in London before returning home.
Got some ideas for London (though good suggestions always welcome) but Bruges? Not so much.
We haven't really got long with travelling etc. So just want to get a flavour of the place. We enjoy wandering down side streets, cafes, beer, nice architecture, parks. I'm not personally a big one for galleries and museums but Mrs Bloke is. So bonus points for any man crèche suggestions when she is getting a culture fix.
I will of course be rewatching 'in Bruges' as homework prior to travel. As is the law.
Walk around the canals. Visit the tower. Visit the brewery. Drink beer. Eat chips and waffles.
The brewery tour is good. There's a great view from up the top of the tower. Canal tour is also good, as are the museums.
The atmosphere is great and there's lots just to wander around.
The beer is very strong.
If breakfast isn't included with your hotel, I can't emphasise this enough, book well in advance for anywhere that you'd like to go for breakfast. Same goes for dinner. Lunch can be a bit more flexible.
I thought the galleries were amazing and you'd see the birth of oil painting. The pass for all the galaries was well worth it in my opinion. But if that's really not your thing, then a visit to the two breweries in the middle of the city to drink beer might pass the time. A walking tour is always worth it for learning a bit about the cities history, and rarely that expensive.
Avoid the alcoves.
Been a few times, tbh it's mostly wandering around cafe's, beer and chocolate. Worth trying chocolate from different places and bringing a load back, it's far better than most of our stuff here! There's also a massive selection of beers in the supermarkets, so nice and easy to stock up and bring a rucksack full back.
Also the bell tower. Boat trip if the weather is OK. The basicalla is worth a look- has some of the baby Jesus' blood in it to look at.
Walk around the canals. Visit the tower. Visit the brewery. Drink beer. Eat chips and waffles.
This pretty much! We walked past a bar doing flights of beer, small samples of each beer they had. There was 12 beers in total! It was a sight to behold!
If you like Chocolate:
https://choco-story-brussels.be/en
We enjoyed it, actually learned quite a lot about chocolate, and got a liking for single origin chocolate.
Walk around the canals. Visit the tower. Visit the brewery. Drink beer. Eat chips and waffles.
+1, although you can do a boat trip to save your wobbly legs.
2Be for drinking ludicrously strong beer in the sunshine for instagram.
Le Trappiste for drinking ludicrously strong beer in a cellar*.
*it's not a polished hipster cellar experience
Drink beer and act like a fool. A Brugse Fool, in fact!
Brugse Zot for the win!
We spent an afternoon/night their in 2023, hotel right in the centre meant we walked everywhere.
Pleasant place, bustling and TBH the only bad meal of our 2 weeks eating out 2-3 times a day in Holland, Belgium & France.
Olivers Chocolate cafe is really great, and relatively quiet too - Sint-Amandsstraat 14, 8000 Brugge, Belgium
Ribs n Beer was also good last time we went - very busy but did have bottonless ribs which was great - Ezelstraat 50, 8000 Brugge, Belgium
The Duvelorium was also pretty good - beer, a mini museum and views over the square. - https://www.historium.be/en/duvelorium
Thanks all some great ideas, keep them coming. Loving the bottomless ribs suggestions, but I maybe should have mentioned my wife is vegetarian!
Eat chips with mayonnaise and waffles.
Fixed that for you. 🙂
For the very best hot chocolate you'll ever experience visit The Old Chocolate House - https://www.oldchocolatehouse.be/
If you want a beer and you want it in a 'mad as a box of frogs' antique shop get yourself to Yesterday's World -
maybe should have mentioned my wife is vegetarian!
In that case, you need to try Réliva ( https://en.reliva.be/) but book in advance. It's a great place with a small number of covers and is run by a couple; he's front of house and she's alone in the kitchen.
If you want to spend a bit less then head for De Bron at Katelijnestraat 82 for lunch.
Brugse Zot for the win!
I came here to say that – apparently, it's the only remaining Trappist Brewery based in Bruges.
nah, De Halve Maan (the brewery wot makes Zot) is awesome, but I didn't see any monks when I did the tour!!
most suggestions have been covered above, I enjoyed the chocolate museum and - very random - the frites museum! Definitely the best one though is the beer museum, not least because there's a great bar at the end with a good beer selection and much less busy than most other places.
Le Trappiste as mentioned is a great venue for a beer, very atmospheric with the medieval vaulted ceiling.
Watch the film again. Visit the chapel and see the blood whilst reciting the film, go up the tower whilst reciting the film, mooch about the square and the canals whilst reciting the film. Get hammered. Eat chips and mayo. Take some chocolate and beer glasses home.
Film midgets
Not walk up the tower if "yous a bunch of elephants "
Not hide after a botched assasination attempt .
And drink beer
Take the train to Gent/Ghent! A less-touristy version of Bruges.
Otherwise, bike hire and pootle about, nice and flat 🙂 traffic free, canal-side, to the Dutch border.
Take the train to Gent/Ghent! A less-touristy version of Bruges.
I had the pleasure of a week for work in Ghent this time last year. Lovely place.
Bookmarked,
The Halve Maan brewery tour is amazing. Seeing how they have integrated the new brewery and kept all the old stuff at the same time is a real experience.
And the beers. Try and buy this. It's almost impossible to get in the UK and delicious https://www.halvemaan.be/en/straffe-hendrik-quadrupel
Eat chips with mayonnaise
You're a wrong un.
De Garre is a place we ended up. There's a menu that's very thick, but it's just beers. The only food was ham/schinken, cheese or those tiny little pickled onions.
Was brilliant.
Definitely the brewery, and do the XL tour not the normal one if you can, you see more, get a really funny guide and get to try a number of different beers.
(do you all get the fact that the old brewery is the one you visit, but as output increased, the large lorries cannot get to old brewery, so they built a new botting plant on the outskirts and there is actually a beer pipeline going under the city - we sat there trying to calculate the cost of continuing it through the Chunnel and back home!)
There is a great restaurant called Ribs n Beer - and just as it says on the tin, they bring you endless racks of ribs until you say stop - i don't think they'd bargained for 4 UK lads that had just cycled the 280km Tour of Flanders event!
Don't forget to duck if on the boat tours.
+1 for the galleries.
I had the pleasure of a week for work in Ghent this time last year. Lovely place
luckily there’s bottomless ribs in Ghent as well at Amadeus!
heading to Bruges a week on monday, on a bike tour.
ferry to Dunkirk, then a ride to Bruges for 5 days,
taking in 2 CX races whilst there. both with a very good race line up. MVP, and all the usual top 10 riders.
heading to the coast for the ride back, staying in a lighthouse.
cant wait.
I think we had waffles twice on a day trip to Bruges.
dont they have pindasaus in bruges?
Going to go a bit leftfield here, but how about cutting off your fingers and throwing them at your (former) best mate?
It's one of the few places in the world where you can use the line "voulez vous crochet avec moi?" to some effect so be sure to do that, though it might work better if they spoke French rather than Flemish but hey. I've only been there on bike trips to er smash the cobbles and never got past the waffles and hot chocolate, and beer and chips, and mayo obv, which do take some getting past.
