Globe Corner Blogs

Bruges is beautiful…  It’s an incredible place to see: a tiny town of canals and swans, weeping willows and ivy, and not a single building that looks like it was built after the year 1500. Brick gingerbread houses with stepped Dutch roofs, tiny cobblestone bridges crossing calm canals, and shady squares with gnarly old trees and tweeting birds. It’s all yours… to share with about 20,000 other tourists! Really, it’s so crowded with tourists there that it’s almost enough to make you lose your appetite for waffles. We found two pretty good ways to avoid the hordes: first, get to the sites you really want to see as early as possible, and second: get a bike!

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There are plenty of spots around to rent bikes, but we chose the one closest to the train so that we could pack our luggage on our bike racks and skip paying for a bus or cab to the hotel. After some juggling of luggage straps and bike locks, we were on our way. Biking on cobblestones can be a bit bumpy, but the freedom of moving past the crowds is great. Just beyond the inner ring canal, the city begins to appear less Disney World and more believable as a place where someone might live. If you make it to the outer ring, where there are four windmills that are worth seeing, you can catch glimpses across the canal of such  21st-Century necessities as gas stations and supermarkets, which really sort of comes as a relief. The crowds disperse pretty rapidly outside the main center, and you can make an afternoon of winding along the canals, occasionally stopping for reinforcements at the city’s cute and charming pubs.

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In Bruges, we climbed the Belfry first thing in the morning, and did find the view from the top to be worth the climb. The Groeninge is a quick and fun stop for checking out a few great Flemish Primitives paintings (amazing Jan van Eycks and Hans Memlings), though out of the 11 rooms, only the first five or so were really stellar.

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We were happy to find some good vegetarian food in Bruges; the first night we went to a Moroccan place, Ryad, that had some really interesting veggie plates, and the next day we had an amazing lunch at Sinte Barbe, near Saint Anna’s Church. We asked about vegetarian options, and the chef offered to make a variation of the moussaka they were making that day. Filled with eggplant, zucchini, and potatoes, it was a delicious gratin of cheeses and fresh herbs. It was served with a very nice and simple clear-broth vegetable soup and a basket of whole-grain bread with some very delicious butter; made us wish they were open for dinner.

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Also worth seeking out is Staminee de Garre pub. Off of Breidelstrasse right near the Burg, the pub is on a miniscule, hard-to-spot alley that is sandwiched between a chocolatier and a candy shoppe. De Garre is a tiny space with dark wooden walls and an upper level that overlooks the bar, and it feels like they’ve been serving beer in there for centuries. Classical music adds to the ambiance, and you might even hear Flemish being spoken in there, as it seems to attract some Belgian tourists. We found this place on The BeerAdvocate website, which is filled with tips on bars from beer enthusiasts who come here annually for conferences. So far, its provided us with some of our best travel tips for Belgium! We are on a mission to try at least one brew from each of the six Trappist breweries in Belgium: so far, my favorite is the Rochefort 10. We’re on a special hunt for the elusive Westvleteren Trappist beers, at times only available for sale directly from the Abbey.

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We had such a great time biking in Bruges that we decided to pick some up when we got to Antwerp. The city has a stop-and-go bike rental program, but we decided to go with the standard 24-hour rental package available at the train station. The biking experience here was also great, in some ways even a bit better than in Bruges, due to the presence of bike lanes and the absence of cobblestones!

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(Contributor’s Note: we later discovered the Westvleteren “Westie” 12 at a bar in Brussels–consistently rated as one of the best beers in the world!)

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Read more: Beer, Belgium, Bike Tours, Cycling, Travel, Travel Tips and Resources


Kate lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her interests include fine arts, food and wine, and baseball.

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