Sunday 12 August 2007

A short holiday

We have just returned from a two day holiday. We went here....


...to Bruges.

Over the last few years our holidays have been UK based so this was a bit of a treat. It was a spur of the moment decision and we went by train.

We booked our tickets and a hotel for one night just a couple of days before we went. We left home just after 5:30 am on Thursday and walked through our village to the station. It was a beautiful morning, with the sun just rising and not surprisingly at that time virtually no-one about. The journey went smoothly and we arrived in Bruges around lunch-time. Unfortunately we left the good weather behind, it poured with rain all day in Belgium last Thursday and was dull and cloudy on Friday (yes, I do know that there was unbroken sun here on both days!).




We had not been to Bruges before and it was a great place for a short visit as it is small enough to walk round easily. It is a very pretty place even in the rain and we enjoyed exploring all the cobbled streets before disappearing into a teashop to dry off and sample some of the famous handmade chocolates.





On Friday morning we had a quick walk round Bruges and then caught the train back to Brussels.






We must have walked for miles and it was quite a relief to settle down on Eurostar late Friday afternoon and rest. We chose to visit somewhere we could reach by train instead of flying because it is a "greener" way of travelling but I actually prefer it for travelling a short distance. I particularly enjoyed the hour long journey between Brussels and Bruges, you get a good impression of the countryside from a train. My main impressions from this train trip, houses and gardens are very neat and tidy in Belgium and at the moment there are fields and fields of sweetcorn!

3 comments:

Jessica at Bwlchyrhyd said...

Well done for choosing to travel by train! I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about the protest camp at Heathrow and how it was "unfair" on people who had spent all year saving for a holiday to have their flights disrupted... I got quite irate -- there is no such thing as the "right to fly"!

BurdockBoy said...

I love traveling by train. We have a pretty lousy rail system over here, but luckily we have a staition ight here in my town (the nearest airport is 1.5-2 hours away.

Great photos. Looks like a great place to visit.

Sabine said...

Nice that you liked your trip to Belgium (with excuses for our horrible summer). I used to go twice a year to the UK, but that's history now, due to the expensive British Pound...
I also prefer travelling by train, car, boat,... There is still so much to see in Europe within a day driving distance!