Duke's Excellent Adventure!: Oostende and Bruges, Belgium

Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Oostende and Bruges, Belgium

Belgium speaks three languages, Dutch, French, and German. Up here in the north, we were in the Dutch region, which is pretty funny for me because I can understand a lot of German, so when I'm walking around, I think I know what the people are saying, but no, I don't really.

The port town is Oostende, but the Bruges is only a 15 minute train ride away, so this is what most people do.

Cathedral in Oostende

Bike Culture. There isn't much of a parking lot at the train station, but there's plenty of room for your bike.

Bruges is an old circular city with a main square in the middle. Walking your way to that square may feel a little bit like navigating through a circle maze, but there are plenty of things to see along the way.

And it's another canal city.

With churchy things.

Now here is something pretty incredible. Belgian chocolate truffles. I bought the largest box available. I'm still eating them.

And here's how they're made.

Chocolate machines!

Finally found the center of town!

Belgians like things pointy.

Obligatory statue in the square.

I stood in the middle of Bruges and did my best to get a 360° panorama.

Click

I could have spent all day there, but the ship had a tendency to sail away before night fall, and I still wanted to put some time into Oostende as well, so after getting my truffles and pictures, I ran back out of the city, and hopped on the train back to the harbor city.

Snapped this on my way out of Bruges.

You have to cross this river to get to the train station. This is what the country looks like outside of the city.

Once I'm back in Oostende, I have about an hour before my back on board, so I start running around. It turns out they have some sort of festival going on, so they're setting up for a band, and meanwhile there's a more folky things going on. I'll just show the video.

I'm not really sure what it's all about, but I found this sign. If you read Dutch, then you'll know what this festival is all about.

It's a pretty good crowd for a Tuesday.

This wasn't even the festival area. I wonder if it's always like this.

Saw this across the way, so I used my 18x zoom lense. Although I have seen many castles, this was the first time I found a tower that looks exactly like the rook chess piece.

This tower only moves in straight lines.

The last thing I did before running back to the ship was visit that Cathedral I zoomed in on when I first got off the ship several hours earlier (see the first picture I posted).