Friday, February 15, 2008

Bruges

I want to write about my holiday in Bruges, but without boring you to death going on about it, so this is pretty image heavy…
Bruges (or Brugge as they call it) is probably the most beautiful city I’ve visited (Okay, Paris is pretty, but Bruges is beautiful in a way Paris can never be) and the locals are amazing. Not only are they all friendly, but most of them speak more than one language! Amazing.
And you can walk from one side of the city to the other in half-an-hour (a bit like York…) – in fact it was a lot like Cambridge in many respects, with all its bridges and old buildings. Apparently Bruges is so beautiful that a German bomber commander decided not to drop any bombs on Bruges because it would be a travesty to destroy the city (they didn’t bomb Cambridge because there’s no industry there – whether this is actually the case for Bruges or not I don’t know, but it’s a lovely story)

So, here’s a potted highlights of the whole trip:
OH and I saw a beautiful sunset over Hull as we left on the overnight ferry…  Pride of York 05
We took the same picture everyone always takes of Bruges, and lots more on the canal boat tour on our first morning…  Photo everyone takes of Bruges
The room in the Jan Brito Hotel was amazing, and we got flowers, fruit, champagne and more as part of the package…  Room in the Jan Brito
We had fabulous food…
 Mussels
We went on a horse drawn carriage tour of the city (included in the package from the hotel)…  Bruges Buildings 101
And we went on a tour of the Halve Maan brewery which included a free beer each…  Brugse Zot x 2
We had a 4* four course dinner and then tea in front of the fire in the hotel…
 In the Lounge at Jan Brito
We upgraded our cabin on the way home to a much bigger one.  Cabin Homeward

But I only managed to knit for one hour on the train from York to Hull. The rest of the time I was either too excited, too cold or too drunk (or on occasion, a combination of these) to knit.
On that same knitting front, the Earl Grey socks were going really well, I had done the first pattern repeat when I noticed a boo-boo that wasn’t fixable (in the cable no less) by me at any rate. So I ripped it back, and I’m on the ribbing again. Boo. This doesn’t count as starting something new though.

2 comments:

kasiaiscarly said...

ok, i'd never heard of bruges until like two weeks ago when i saw a movie preview with colin farrell! now you went there! how funny! glad you had a great time!

Dianne said...

Wow - beautiful city! Thanks for sharing the pictures.