A Quick Trip to Bruges!

From Berkshire to Bruges – the Tribe’s half term continues at a pace! Having spent the last couple of years in the Middle East, the thought of visiting a European city in the winter is rather exciting. From Hampshire we head to Folkestone and the Eurotunnel and within 31/2 hours we are through the tunnel and in France. Having experienced the border controls of the Middle East – quite time consuming – the Tribe are amazed at how easily we pass into France and then into Belgium. I guess that it’s the equivalent of driving between the Emirates – Dubai to Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al Quwain, Fujairah or Ras al Kamaih. Just a little less sandy.

In France the landscape is flat, amazingly flat, and the driving is easy. In just over an hour we are on the outskirts of Bruges, once one of the commercial hubs of Europe, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is a beautiful, incredibly picturesque and surprisingly unspoilt town, with a series of waterways winding their way under ancient bridges and past a myriad of old merchants’ houses; you can see why it is known as ‘the Venice of the North’. However, it can be incredibly busy and obviously touristy, so visiting when it is the winter has its advantages.

Hotel Aragon
Hotel Aragon
image
Public car park near the hotel with easier access!

We stay at the Hotel Aragon which is very central and has a few apartments just around the corner from the main hotel – we had one with 3 bedrooms and a kitchen. Although there is a hotel car park, I don’t think that we’d ever have got our car around the tight corners and through the narrow alleyway, but there is an underground car park nearby (which I think is cheaper!).

20140227-110517.jpg
Belfort, Markt

 

 

 

 

With our bags dropped off we head through cobbled streets to the Markt (Market Square) surrounded by tall, narrow buildings housing restaurants and cafes and dominated by the impressive 13th Century Belfort standing 83m tall. You can climb the tower’s 366 stairs for amazing views, but we didn’t! Another time. We were here for the renowned frites and mayonnaise from one of the two vans located at the foot of the Belfort – the most famous chippies in the world?? Delicious! In the centre of the Markt, horse drawn carriages wait for customers for a city tour, but we decide to find one of the canal trips and see Bruges from the water.

Narrow, cobbled alleyways of Bruges
Narrow, cobbled alleyways of Bruges

Walking though narrow alleyways and across cobbled squares we found what was probably the only landing stage open at this time of year. We were also the last to get on what was a very full boat. Despite the littlest falling, banging her face and subsequently screaming her head off as we were getting onboard (the sort of situation when you’d actually just like to round all the children up and leave, immediately), a little TLC, pointing out the sleeping ducks and gargoyles on the buildings, plus the

View from the boat
View from the boat

excitement of going underneath the low and ‘very dark’ bridges, the pain and blood were soon forgotten (on the mother’s guilt remained!). The tour was in English and Flemish and was very informative – we went under medieval bridges, passed beautifully renovated merchant’s houses and almshouses and discovered how this was a place for salt traders to trade in the late Middle Ages when salt was as valuable as gold as it was used as a preservative. In fact the word ‘salary’ comes from the Latin word for salt, ‘sal’, when people were paid in salt. I was glad that I’d brought along all of our hats and gloves as it was pretty cold on the water.

image
Looking for hot chocolate … and a beer!

After disembarking we meandered through the streets as dusk fell before finding a very local bar for the Tribe to have hot chocolate whilst FotT sampled some Belgian beer. What a novelty! Despite a very pleasant hour we realised that the littlest was shattered and would never make it through dinner, so we headed back to the hotel apartment thinking that it would be easy to find a restaurant that did takeaways. Not so. We’d obviously forgotten that not everywhere delivers anything, anywhere (like Dubai), so there are pros and cons wherever you are. Eventually FotT did find a pizza place and the Tribe eventually got to sleep. Next time we will either eat earlier or buy something from one of the small supermarkets before they close (at 7pm in Bruges!). The pizzas were good or was I just starving?

The following day after a good breakfast in the hotel we headed off to find Choco-Story (the Chocolate Museum, www.choco-story.be), a stone’s throw from the Markt at Wijnzakstraat 2 (Sint-Jansplein). This was the highlight for the Tribe. Despite the fact that it was early, winter and mid-week, there were still a fair number of visitors so it must get really busy at peak times. It is housed in the Maison de Croon, a 4 storey corner townhouse that was originally a tavern. The museum recounts the most comprehensive history of chocolate that I have ever come across and it is fascinating – from the Aztecs discovering how to use cacao beans for hot chocolate and how, if hot air was blown into their drink, it would froth up (how’s that for a historical link for our daily cappucino!) to the explorer Cortez bringing the cacao bean back to Spain in 1528 and eventually to London in the 1600s when chocolate houses became all the rage. It was only in the mid 1800s that the first solid chocolate was produced. The museum shows where most cacao beans come from today and has a large exhibition about Belgian being very much the home of high quality chocolate (it’s all to do with the cocoa percentage – the higher the better) and also about the beneficial health benefits of high cocoa chocolate. At the end of the museum you can see chocolate actually being made and there is a live demonstration where you also get to taste what is made! The Tribe were given an educational game with stickers to do as they went through the museum and were rewarded with a rather delicious chocolate lolly on completion. There is also a shop where we bought a couple of bags of chocolate – obviously for the health benefits that we’d just read about. The museum is over several floors and there are quite a lot of steps and by the end the littlest had definitely had enough and was ready to leave.

Hotel Craenenburg
Grand Cafe Craenenburg

Before returning to the Eurotunnel we stopped for a coffee and more hot chocolates at the renowned Grand Cafe Craenenburg (www.craenenburg.be) on the corner of Markt and Saint Amandstreet. It has been here since the 12th Century and the story goes that Margaretha of York in 1468 watched the games of the knights that took place in the Market Square in celebration of her marriage to Charles the Bold. In 1488 Archduke Maximilian of Austria was imprisoned here.

Inside Hotel Craenenburg with pipes on far left wall
Inside Grand Cafe Craenenburg with pipes on far left wall

It is now a popular cafe and brasserie for tourists and locals with wooden beams, copper light fittings, wooden benches and even a selection of pipes on the wall that hark back to when it was used as the base for the Bruges smokers’ club in 1905.

Hotel Craenenburg
Grand Cafe Craenenburg

The service was excellent – very friendly, patient and professional – and the hot chocolates that the Tribe had were delicious. A fitting end to our very brief visit to Bruges and we will definitely be back to climb to the top of the Belfort and perhaps even follow the ‘In Bruges’ walking tour that takes you to the film’s various locations. Although maybe we should see the film first!

Eurotunnel, www.eurotunnel.com
Hotel Aragon, Naaldenstraat 22, Bruges
+32 50 33 35 33
www.aragon.be
We booked direct with the hotel as they guarantee the best rate.<<<

Author: Mother of the Tribe

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.