Last week I visited Bruges for the third time.
That may seem like quite a lot of visits for someone to make to a fairly small Belgian city in their lifetime. And it is. Especially when there are more places on my “to-see” list than I can count on all fingers and toes. But sometimes, a girl just finds herself in Bruges. What can I say?
The first time I visited I was in primary school and my family and I went to Bruges and Ghent for a weekend, on an organised coach trip where we spent the whole journey almost gagging as an incontinent woman kept having “accidents” on the seat behind us. The holiday was mostly a success, but I can’t remember any of it, having been too young to appreciate travel of any kind if it didn’t involve my favourite boy band.
Then, when I was older and in high school, my sister spent three months living and working in Brussels. My parents and I took the Eurostar out to visit her for a weekend and I felt really grown up staying with my sister in her shared house. We visited Bruges as a daytrip from the city and my Dad proceeded to worry the whole day that my sister was going to get us lost because she refused to bring a map with her.
Again, I have no recollection of what Bruges was like during that day trip. At all. I couldn’t have even told you what it looked like.
On this more recent visit, we knew we wanted to get out of Brussels and explore, but we were having a hard time deciding where to go. We had both been to Bruges before, but never together, and so decided this would be a good experience for us to share.
When Scott asked me why I wanted to go to Bruges, I couldn’t give him an answer. I couldn’t even have told him what there was to do or see there.
When it comes to Bruges, I seem to draw a mental blank.
After spending the day there this year, I think I can now narrow down why.
Bruges is pretty. That is the main reason why it draws so many tourists. It is lined with canals that you can take boat cruises on, it has an attractive main square lined with streetside cafes and it has windmills.
So, basically, a lot like the Amsterdam we had just come from.
Bruges sells wonderful chocolates and lace. It has swans gliding along its canals. Bacsially, it is pretty and lovely and quaint.
But memorable? Not so much so.
I realised, as I slurped my delicious hand-mixed hot chocolate, that I think the reason that Bruges always seems to slip through the cracks when it comes to my memory of it is that it is very similar to so many of its other European counterpart cities.
It doesn’t have Manneken Pis. It doesn’t have an Eiffel Tower. It doesn’t have a Collosseum. It just has the tower that featured in “In Bruges”. The film which used the city as a backdrop has become the posterboy for the city itself. Which makes me feel sorry for Bruges and all of its history.
We decided to take a boat trip with the hoardes of other tourists as it was such a sunny day, and as we cruised the water and I had a vague sense of deja vu, I realised that even after my third visit I still will probably have very little to recount about the city in the future.
Except the hot chocolate. That will definitely be stored in my food memory bank forever.
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