A Visit to Flanders

The first week of March I had some good friends in town and we all took a weekend trip to Bruges, Belgium, in what was once Flanders.

We took the Eurostar in on a Friday evening which was a bit of an adventure in itself. We upgraded to 'Leisure Select' which meant we got fed a pretty nice meal and were kept in wine, water and coffee for the short trip to Brussels. This was the first time I have gone beyond the regular coach class on the Eurostar and I would highly recommend it, especially if the ticket difference is only 10 pounds like it was for us.

I had heard before that Bruges was a nice place but I really didn't know that much about it. Turns out that Bruges was originally part of Flanders (as was Amsterdam and most of the Netherlands) and most people there speak Flemish. Silly me, I thought most people in Belgium spoke French. When I heard people speaking Flemish, I was really confused - I thought, well that is not German, it is definitely not French, what is that??? I guess it is quite close to Dutch. I found myself getting confused as to whether or not to say Merci or Danke but the Flemish is close enough, Dank U, so not sure if they could tell anyway, since I am a dumb english speaking american.

The first confusion with the different language though came when we were looking for the train from Brussels onwards to Bruges. JIm was asking for Bruges, but the lady in the station was saying Brugge (sounds like bru-ga). We were talking about the same place, but were saying it in three different languages. Luckily we found our train and onwards to Bruges without a problem.

Once we made it to Bruges, we stayed in a very charming B&B that Cathe had found on the web right near the town centre. After a snack (including a lovely Belgian beer) we settled in for the night.

The next morning we awoke to what we thought was a very miserable storm coming in - the wind and rain sounded so horrible I think we all thought we were going to stay in all day. Luckily it didn't rain much on us on Saturday, though I have to say it was definitely colder than I expected. We made the most of it though, we saw some great art including some Flemish primitives, explored a lot of of the city's major sights on foot or during a bus tour, and of course, sampled from many of the 47 chocolate shops in the area. Sunday Cathe and I also got the opportunity to endulge in Moules and Frites - Belgian Frites of course, not French.

While we were there, there were crews filming a new movie, In Bruges, due out in 2008 and starring Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes. Unfortunately we did not see them wandering around, but we did see a lot of cameras and the Christmas decorations that were up as part of the setting.

To say that Bruges is charming is quite the understatement - it is a gorgeous city surrounded by canals - a very clean, smaller version of Amsterdam. I would definitely recommend it for a weekend. Photos are posted here.