A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That . .: Day 12 - Brugge - Saturday

We had breakfast at 8 am and while we were eating they already started cleaning our bedrooms. The boat crew was going to have a busy day with us leaving and new people coming in. We finished packing and said goodbye to everyone.

View from our porthole on the last day. . .
all the bikes are ready for the next set of people

My total tally for distance is 155 miles this week!!!! The bike and barge trip was quite good and I think I would not mind doing another trip one day, as long as it is easy and flat and short distances. But next time I’ll take SPF 50 lip balm with me and all the other balms to heal sunburns if the lip balm doesn't work. The week would have been better if my lip wasn't hurting so much. We booked our trip through Tripsite.com and I think they did an excellent job.

We decided to take the big suitcase to the train station and store it in one of the lockers so we didn't have to lug it around town. Unfortunately we broke one of the wheels, but luckily it wasn't one of the wheels we needed to pull the bag. We went straight to the hotel, but since it was morning our room was not ready yet, but we were able to leave our overnight bags in their luggage room.

We walked around town and checked several lace and other souvenir stores. We also went to one big market that sold pretty much everything under the sun. Then we went to an old fish-market that had artsy craftsy stuff and finally along one of the streets which had a flea-market kind of market.

Lace shop window in Brugge

Brugge

Lighthouse food truck at the market in Brugge

No it's not a clock . . . this one show which direction
the wind blows

A local artist at work in Brugge

Brugge

Near Beguinale House in Brugge

Beguinale House in Brugge

Near Beguinale House in Brugge

We had lunch close to our hotel at a restaurant called “Venice”. We had mussels and french fries and a beer. We met Katie and Lisa and they ended up taking our table after we left. We headed out for more stores and sightseeing and ended up at the brewery De Halve Maan aka Henri Maes Brewery. It has been in that place since 1856 and is the only brewery left in Brugge. There used to be over 30 of them long time ago. We did a brewery tour where they told us about the history of this place and how they make beer. We also had to climb to the top of the building, 110 steps up and another down. We had a good view of the city from there. The tickets also included a free glass of one of their beers. We ended up sharing a table with 4 other Americans. One couple was from Pennsylvania and the other from Wisconsin.

Mussels and fries

De Halve Maan brewery, Brugge

We decided to go and see if our room was ready by then and since it was we had a little rest before heading out for dinner. We had our dinner at Poules Moules, I had a fixed menu, soup was tomato, main course was Flemish beef stew and dessert was chocolate mousse. Jeff had lasagna but we shared my soup and mousse. Meg and her son Ian were having their dinner at the next restaurant over, so we just quickly stopped to say hello before heading out for a quick walk around town. We ended up at the old fish-market and they had some sort of dance party going on there. We saw one of the German couples there. Soon after that we headed back to the hotel.