Belfort, Bruges
Day 2 in Brugge saw us heading into the Markt Square to climb the Belfort. The bell tower is a major landmark in the town, and rises imposingly above the square. It plays 4 (very out of tune) songs every ¼ hour between 6am-10pm. At quarter past the hour it plays Greensleeves! We puffed our way up over 366 narrow winding steps and admired the view of all of Brugge. It was slightly hazy, as you’ll see in the photos.
On Wednesdays the farmers markets are set up in the square, so after catching our breath we dove into the crowds to find some fixings for a picnic. Then we hired some bicycles from the nearby hire shop (once again, we got a discount – 8 instead of 12 euros each)!
Upon Maggie’s recommendation we decided to cycle out to Damme, a small village about 5 km out of Brugge. There was a slight headwind, but nothing could truly mar the beauty of the morning. Once you’re out of town, there is a bike path aside the canal almost the whole distance to Damme. In fact, if we’d kept going on it for another 10km we would have been in the Netherlands!
Bike path to Damme
Damme is a lovely little town, with much of Brugge’s beauty, but a fraction of the size. However, I should mention that cobblestones when you’re on a bike make for a very sore derrière! After a wander around the village, which is home to no less than 9 bookshops, we rode back to the canal and parked our bikes to have lunch.
Bikes!
Lunch (and food in general) will be the subject of another post, so I’ll leave that to your imagination for now. However, it was a truly wonderful day, and we are both so glad we decided to take the time to see a bit more of the place. I could definitely come back to Belgium!
