In Brugge

One of the embarkation points for the canal tours that thread through the oldest part of the city

About a month ago we decided we wanted to go on an impromptu city break and after an intensive program of brainstorming, focus groups, consultations and feasibility studies (Sue: How about Brugge? Me: Yeah, okay) we decided upon Brugge. We thought it might be nice to have some travelling buddies on this one so we rounded up a posse and set off on a Friday after work.

The obvious way to get there is through the Chunnel, it only takes two hours to get to Brussels where we changed onto a local train and within another hour we were in one of Europe's most unblemished medieval cities. At the time I hadn't paid very much attention to the times of these trains, I just assumed it would take quite a long time, so I was impressed with the three hour travel time. We can't even get to (most) of our parent's houses in that time.

In the background, the Church of Our Lady

Having had a week to think about it I still can't decide if it's the cobbled, winding streets that defines Brugge or its network of canals that thread their way through the city like a spiders web that has seen better days. On reflection it must be the interplay between the two that lend the city its charm and character. It certainly has both in spades. We arrived at the train station shortly before the medieval bells of the city began peeling the new day. My usual studies of maps of the city beforehand had revealed that it was less than two miles to our hotel and so we decided to walk and get a feel for our host of the next couple of days. The other main bit of preparation that we had all done for this trip was to watch In Bruges, the brilliant film by Martin McDonagh (you should also check out The Guard by his brother John, that would be an awesome double bill). This basically meant that we spent an unhealthy proportion of the weekend quoting and swearing our way through the streets. I highly recommend such a strategy.

Inevitably, there was an Irish pub 100 yards from our hotel but at least this meant that we had somewhere to have a drink into the small hours of Friday night and, in fairness, it was actually a decent place with good beers, good atmosphere and live music.

An artist's impression of the famous belfry

Much like every other tourist our rough itinerary consisted of beer, canals, chocolate and cathedrals; not necessarily in that order. Quite literally every street in Brugge has a chocolate shop and many have up to a dozen; there must be scores of them in total. It is all delicious but it is also expensive, expect to pay easily over twenty quid if you want to have more than enough to simply last the train journey home. Eating and drinking in general is quite tough on the wallet, we just had to accept that we were going to pay €6-7 for a pint and €20 or so for a straightforward dinner; there aren't many places in the world where Londoners can go and feel like things are expensive but this was definitely one of them. The sting of this was slightly mitigated by the mirth caused by using the words Hoegaarden (a beer) and slaagroom (chantilly cream) as frequently as possible.

Perhaps the best way to see the town is by canal and by horse. A thirty minute boat trip with multilingual guide only costs a few Euros per person; a thirty minute horse trip is a bit more pricey, in the order of €38 but as there were 5 of us it wasn't too bad.

The tallest building in Brugge isn't the famous belfry but the spire of the Church of Our Lady. At 122 metres it completely dominates the skyline and is nearly half as tall again as the next highest building. Close up it looks relatively new; it's very clean and isn't particularly ornate but even its most recent sections are more than half a millennium old. It is also the second tallest brick tower in the world second only to St. Martin's church in Landshut, Germany. Disappointingly, it didn't appear possible to go up the tower during our visit.

The Church of Our Lady

Also slightly disappointing was the view from the top of belfry. Having queued for a good hour we finally got to haul ourselves up the 366 increasingly narrow steps to the summit of the bell tower where I had hoped for wide panoramas of the town square and beyond. Unfortunately, all the openings at the top were covered up with chicken wire so that even getting a half decent single shot was all but impossible nevermind a sweeping vista of a shot. It is, nonetheless, an impressive stucture, built in three main phases between the 13th-15th centuries.

One of the highlights of Brugge is its myriad array of beers. There are over 150 breweries in Belgium brewing between 600-1000 beers depending on who you listen to, that means there is a huge amount of choice. We set ourselves the target of never drinking the same beer twice, a challenge that proved fairly easy to meet. As we essentially ordered beers at random it did mean that we occasionally got one that we weren't so keen on but on the whole it went down a treat. You can do a tour of De Halve Maan (The Half Moon) brewery that lasts about 45 minutes and throws in a free beer at the end. I really enjoyed the tour, it had a good mix of history and the science and processes of the beer making tradition. I never knew that so much nudity was integral to brewing a tasty pint.

The 83 metre high belfry tower

It is Brugge's access to the sea that made it such a prosperous town. The port was a gateway to the markets of the world, they exported cloth and bought up spices. The money that flooded in led to the establishment of one of the first worldwide commercial powers. Banking, and the power and influence that come with it, rapidly made Brugge a force to be reckoned with in northern Europe. It was here that what could have been the first stock exchange in the world was established. All this prosperity grew Brugge to a size of more than 200,000 inhabitants, more than twice as many as it has today. In the 1650s the future Charles II made his court there in exile whilst Cromwell ruled over England. The erosion of this once mighty city though was literally that. The water channel that gave Brugge its sea access began silting up so that the deep water vessels of world trade were no longer able to get there. Within 200 years the population had shrunk by 75% and Brugge became a quiet backwater.

Today the port has been revived a little but tourists buying up the chocolates and beer is what keeps the town going. Ironically, it is the lack of recent prosperity that has now led to its revival. There is no heavy industry, no ugly glass and steel monoliths to modern living. Walking the streets is like stepping back in time. The swans on the canal, the market square, the cathedrals - it's like a fairytale.