Bruges

We didn’t rush this morning and left the house late morning. The house is only a few minutes walk from the main square, the Market square. There is an 83 metres high belltower with a carillon with 47 melodious bells. There are 366 steps to the bells, starting out wide and finishing as very narrow, steep stairs. The belfry forms part of a 13th century complex of halls, which served as a warehouse and a market hall in the Middle Ages. The view from the top is fantastic.

 

This photo of the Market Square above is not one of ours, it’s from the internet. The sky today is all blue.

Bruges has many canals and boat tours around the canals. We walked around sections of the canal network to suss out where we will get on one of the boats tomorrow.

We then just walked around some of the smaller streets, looking at the buildings, and eventually ended up back at the house.

Dover to Bruges Saturday

We had a very easy run into Dover. We were advised to take the road through Dover town rather than follow the main road, as most people do, because the traffic would be a lot less. Sorry Di, that took us down Maison Dieu Road. We waved on the way past, but you probably didn’t see us through the closed door. This was good advice because the traffic was very heavy and banked up on the main road. We were able to drive past the trucks and into the port area. French customs took a couple of minutes, British border control waved us straight through and we joined one of the many queues to check in. This took another 15 mins (in the queue) and we were sent to queue in lane 233 and wait to board. Boarding started 10 mins after and the ferry left 5 mins early. No hold ups at all.

The day was very clear and sunny and the sea was like glass. Found a table and comfy chairs beside the window and settled in with coffee. Unfortunately there is always a first time for anything and once were seated, I tried Starbucks coffee. It wasn’t too bad.

Once we got to the “other side”, the ferry sailed parallel to the French coast for quite a while, close in. We were able to see people and horses on the beach quite clearly. Easy docking and embarkation and we were off, on the “wrong side of the road”. At least we’d had 6 weeks in the LHD car to get partially used to it.

We drove straight to Dunkirk, parked in the centre of town, at around 12:30, gate crashed a wedding in the town hall and used the toilets.

We drove to the very busy beach nearby, looking for the evacuation beaches, had a walk on the beach (Gary got his feet wet), missed the evacuation beaches which we found out a short while ago (surprising what info you get when you look at the map), and drove on to Bruges.

Fuel light on, looking for a service station and found ourselves in the middle of Bruges, travelling down one way streets, following the GPS and suddenly we were outside “Lady Lace”, where we will spend 3 nights.

We parked illegally in a side street and waited for the owner to meet us, moved to the loading zone outside, unloaded and moved the car about 10 mins walk away where there is free, unrestricted parking. Came back to the house, decided that we should do some shopping (supermarket shut on Sundays) and walked back to the big supermarket just near the car. Good price on wine, so we bought enough that meant we had to bring the car over to the supermarket and drive the shopping home. Found a 4 hour park 5 mins from the house. One hour later, we went to pick up Laura and Tom from the Bruges railway station. They left Aus about 2 weeks ago and will go back in about 4 weeks. We had a late night talking and it was good to see them.