We were up at 5am so that we’d be organised for the 6.15 train to Brussels and then Bruges. It was too early for the buses so we got an Uber, which arrived instantly. It was cold out.

We found the train easily enough and got to our allotted seats. We were in a row facing another 2 seats which had a young American grad student in spread over them. Hehad been to a job interview in a nearby town and got back to Amsterdam late at night so had slept in the station. Not really slept though. Coming from Mississippi and studying in Texas he was feeling very cold and looked every bit like a homeless street person. Nice young man and I hope he gets the job. He was on his way to Paris to have a few days with his girlfriend.

Well it might have been the fast train and we might have paid more to go on it, but it was 90 minutes late getting to Brussels. There was some issue with the points near Rotterdam so we couldn’t go there and all in all had a slower trip than on the regular train. It only got up real speed once and that was after Antwerp.

We changed trains in Brussels and it was another 20 minutes to Bruges. The entire train seemed to be full of tourists going to Bruges. It was cold in Bruges and I was regretting my decision not to take my puffer jacket. We were also hungry and Bruges was closed. Too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. What sort of place requires tourists to actively hunt down food? A weird, medieval, Belgian place, that’s what sort.

The cathedral was closed. Nobody seemed to be in the houses and the shops were all full of souvenirs. It was like a film set and not a real town and – it was full of tourists and their guides. We finally found a restaurant that was open and ordered the lunch special, which was soup (with bread of course) and then either fish and chips or steak and chips. The soup was a vegetable soup and it was delicious and the fish was a cheese topped fish pie in an asparagus flavoured white sauce. Sounds odd but was really delicious. Mike had the steak and it evidently tasted like steak! We each had a beer and a coffee and the lot came to 30€ which was pretty good.

We felt better after food and I donned my raincoat which also assisted with warmth. We managed to get inside 2 cathedrals, (we got kicked out of one as it closed at 1pm) which had stunning art and stained glass windows and very ornate pipe organs.

The second one was the larger and has a statue of Madonna and child by Michaelangelo.

They close off the sanctuary area and call it the museum so you have to pay to see that part. All in the name of god’s good work no doubt. We didn’t pay.

We found the central square and bell tower that features in the eponymous movie but the carillon/bell tower was closed (there’s a theme here).

There was quite a lot of construction and road maintenance going on which was odd given it’s a heritage city with all cobbled streets and is largely pedestrian. We went into this art gallery which has a collection of works by Salvador Dalí. We got the audio tour and I was very tempted by one of the prints (Dalí was a graphic artist so most of his work is limited edition prints) which was for sale for a modest 2900€. Tempted, but not enough to give up a travel, or food, or clothes or…..

Bruges has numerous canals but it was still freezing so we decided to give the boat ride a miss and set off back to the train for our 3 hour journey backWe got back to Amsterdam after 8pm feeling pretty exhausted so bought some salad and ham from the supermarket and had an at home meal using up leftovers and drinking wine, and very nice it was.