Weekend in Bruges

It's just under three weeks before the Russells Abroad Experience ends. Time for one last quick trip. Beautiful Bruges it is!

12:58 We board our Eurostar train that will take us from London under the English Channel.

The conductor makes announcements first in English, then in French.

Amazing to think that in 2 hours we will be in Brussels, Belgium. The portion of the trip through the underwater tunnel takes just 20 minutes.

Our ears pop even in the tunnels on land.

14:59 We arrive in Calais, France. With the one-hour time-zone difference, it has taken just one hour to journey from the island housing England to "The Continent". 

I notice that now the announcements are first made in French, then English.

16:08 Now we are in Brussels and Dutch(German?) has been added to the announcements, followed by French and English. Feeling very multi-cultural! This portion of the journey was through peaceful countryside.

17:30 A one-hour local train ride from Brussels to Bruges and we are here. We walk to our hotel right on the canal near the historic area.

18:30 We are checked in to the hotel and checking out the free wifi. The 1.5 mile walk from the train station took us a while as we made our way through the winding cobble-stoned streets with our rolling luggage clunking along.

Actually it's turned out to be a rather long day when I think about it. We left our house at 11:00 am to catch a train to take the underground to get to the St. Pancras International train station to get on the Eurostar. By the time we walk to our hotel its been 6 1/2 hours door to door. Seems like a long time ago that I was jotting down "Amazing to think that in 2 hours..."

For some reason I did almost no planning for this trip, thinking we would just figure it out when we got here. I used to always buy a guide book ahead of time and attempt an itinerary. I've become complacent after so much traveling, maybe even burned out from trip-planning... Rough  life, right?

So we will just wing it this time, Bruges  is one of those places you can just wander around and enjoy, I'm thinking.