Wednesday 18th September
Today was our last morning in Amsterdam and it was another glorious morning. Our host, Claire, later told us that Amsterdam had already broken the record for the highest number of sunny days. The weather had been beautiful for our whole stay so we were most thankful.
Our train to Bruges didn’t depart until 11.17 am but we set of early to make sure we could find our platform. The train station is a huge glitzy place and is built on the original Harbour area from the 1500s version of Amsterdam. The trip was in two parts with Amsterdam to Brussels (1hr 45 min) and then Brussels to Bruges (1 hr 30 min. ). The first leg was rather uneventful except that I eventually got to see my first authentic windmills in operation.
We arrived into Bruges at a bout 1.30 pm and took a taxi to our lodging. We had a room booked at the two-room lodging of Abiente and were pleasantly surprised to find this an ample sized room and well located. After dropping our bags and greeting our host we set out to take a canal tour. The queue was rather long but we eventually set off on our 30 minute cruise along the Bruges Canals. This took us through different parts of Bruges and the un-captioned photos below are taken from this vantage point.
With the Canal tour behind us we set out to find somewhere to grab a drink and some food. We stumbled upon Cafe Cambrinus and found ourselves seated beside the grandmother of the proprietor, herself enjoying a glass of wine. She was rather proud of her one and only grandson and mentioned that her daughter, the boys mother, had a Brasserie restaurant 50 m down the lane which was a great and popular bistro with a claim to fame of offering up to 400 different beers. You can imagine Marks interest was piqued and thoughts of dining at our apartment hosts suggestion was long gone. We had a chuckle with the grandma that her days were covered between spending time at the Cafe and the restaurant. The cafe was a great venue for a drink and nibbles so we then set our to find the mothers restaurant. Unfortunately, they were fully booked so we set off to Bistro Zwart Huis. This had been recommended by our host and it was a lovely venue offering decent meal options. We were out of there by about 7 pm though so headed home for an early night after a long day.