Just about one year after our first trip after moving to Europe to Gent, we were back at it again with another weekend trip to Belgium! This time, we decided to visit the city of Brugge.

Saturday April 20th

So we only were able to take a one-night trip due to fostering a kitty at the time, but we really packed a lot into this short trip! We took another FlixBus like our last Belgium trip, and even though it was on the longer side (~4.5hr), it was a fairly relaxing trip directly from Amsterdam to Brugge.

Unfortunately, the weather was not great on arrival (rainy), but we were able to escape to this cute place for brunch called That’s Toast. The French toast was delicious and featured several unusual fruits.

Luckily, the weather did improve later in the day! We spent some time exploring the city and were not disappointed to find it quite charming. The last picture is actually the nice view from our hotel room at the Hotel Portinari.

One of the only goals for our trip was to buy some high-quality Belgian chocolate. While the chocolates are still stuck in the review process at the time of writing this article (post to come!), here is a shocking picture of tool-themed chocolate we saw in a shop. Jacob and I couldn’t get over how accurate they looked!

A cautionary tale:

We made just one crucial mistake during our trip, which was ignoring the advice of the hotel receptionist to make a dinner reservation.

Yeah it was not the smartest to skip the dinner reservation. We were planning to go to a pizza place (L’etna) recommended by my dad for dinner, and we didn’t see anything about making reservations on their website. So, we did the millennial thing of avoiding the phone call and assuming no reservations were necessary. Of course, once we got there, they apologetically let us know they were fully booked for the night. The next couple places we tried were also fully booked. Panic was creeping in.

Luckily, we did end up eventually finding a place with a table, Venezia del Nord. The food here was mediocre, but the ambience was cozy. Overall, it ended up working out okay!

After dinner, we went for beers at Le Trappiste, which is located in a neat old cellar with a nice selection of Trappist beers. I went for the special beer (pictured below) that was at a notable 12% ABV, and Jacob’s beer was not far behind in alcohol content. We ended up only needing one drink each!

We finished out Saturday night by walking around one of the summer pop-up fairs that was going on outside our hotel. One of the food vendors was selling oliebollen (a Dutch beignet), which we had been meaning to try as they are also popular in the Netherlands. We tried the oliebollen and found them to have a similar flavor profile as funnel cake (but in a different, spherical shape).

Sunday April 21st

We really crammed a lot into Sunday! Jacob even put everything onto our shared calendar, since we were planning so many activities.

Outer Canal Ring Run

I would definitely recommend the outer canal ring in Brugge for running! It was especially nice running there early as it was very peaceful and quiet.

Waffle Hopping

Full disclosure, we did not intend to visit multiple places for waffles.

After the panic caused by the lack of dinner reservation the night before, we were sure to make a breakfast reservation but found surprisingly few breakfast places open at 9am (and we needed that early breakfast time to make our walking tour!). We did find one place that looked good, Balthasar, and we were able to book a table for 9am.

I ordered a waffle with strawberries and Jacob ordered a waffle with chocolate. But, unfortunately, we were kind of finishing each other’s sentences while ordering, so the waitress (understandably) thought we were ordering one waffle with strawberries and chocolate to share.

The single waffle ended up being quite good! But instead of ordering another waffle, we took the opportunity to try a waffle stand that also looked good: Waffle Bar

Although I was a bit skeptical of the various waffle stands versus a the sit-down restaurant, the waffles from Waffle Bar actually ended up being even better than the one from Balthasar! They made them fresh to order, and they were amazing in texture and taste.

Tours

After filling up on waffles, we walked to the Grote Markt for our meeting point for the Legends of Bruges free walking tour. The tour guide did a great job explaining some of the city’s history, and we ended wishing we could have had more time to try more of her recommendations of places to visit around the city.

Our walking tour went long, so we had to rush out to our next tour at De Halve Maan Brewery, which is known its beer pipeline from the brewery to the bottling plant.

The view from the top of the brewery was great, even though the stairs to get down were so narrow that we were required to descend backward! At the end of the tour, we were able to try the unfiltered beer straight from the brewery. We both opted to try the Brugse Zot Blond, and it was very good.

After the brewery, we stopped for some fries before frantically shopping for some additional chocolate recommended by our walking tour guide. We ended up making it to the bus with time to spare!

Last modified on 2024-06-15