Best of Bruges

We arrived via Eurostar and had three days in Bruges. Being budget travellers we had booked a room in  the Ibis next to the station and I must admit to initially being a little despondent we weren't in a cute 15th century hotel within the town wall but got over this quite quickly as the bed was great, we could watch the rugby in our room and everything worked.....just couldn't swing the cat. 

We explored this great town easily on foot and on bikes with everything in easy distance and the views amazing. This place was basically left to itself after its heyday in the 15th century and wasn't remodelled at any point as nobody considered it worthy of industrialisation and fortunately they had a German officer who saved the town from bombed in WW2. He argued with his superiors that it was too pretty to bomb so they just walked away when the allies arrived..thank heavens for small mercies.

We had lots of  highlights. The Beguinage a semi monastic community of women who sought to serve God without retiring from the world. They were not accountable to the usual religious orders and continued to work and care for the poor. It was a beautiful cloister of buildings and churches surrounded by a wall and canal with an inner courtyard of trees and apparently in spring the whole courtyard is a mass of daffodils. Loved the bike along the canal and seeing the wind mills which had been used to mill grain for the city, the Flemish primitive art in the museums, and of course Leffe beer a lovely blond ale, the Belgium chocolates and amazing buildings everywhere you look. We climbed the bell tower for views over the city but the climb down was very precarious as there was hardly any room on the winding stairwells and was made even more tricky by people coming up at the same time (wish they had read the notice that said give way to traffic coming down) but well worth it especially when the bells tolled when we were up the top. A fabulous city and must see if your in the Netherlands or Belgium.