A Few Days In Brugge

 

The plan was to stay a couple of days in Brugge, but the weather had other ideas.  The wind was atrocious and would have made movement too dangerous with all these bigger boats about as you will see later in the blog.

So it was shopping and sight seeing. The enforced stay was actually very fortuitous as we all experiance more of the city that we would have done. On a previous walk into the city centre I spied the “Olde Segway Shop” with good old fashion Segways to take a tour of Brugge on.

Seeing this photo made me decide to get a haircut. €23 for a hair cut!  still it has been done very nicely and it only took Deb 10 minutes to notice.

According to my Segway guide Brugge was voted the best place to live in Belgium.  I can see why.  What is very noticeable is the lack of food chains.  Indeed since being in Belgium I have yet to see a McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, KFC. Yes, most of where we have been has been rural or small towns so in a major city I was expecting to see them, but no, all food outlets are local traders and no surprise there are hardly any fat people around accept me of course.  There’s also no beggars, drunks, rowdy youth, litter, not even fag butts! And unlike the UK you do see police, a lot of police.

Brugge did well out of my pocket too. I managed to break the MiFi (boring story) so had to fall back on the 3g router which was OK but somehow the phone companies know when one is being used so after about 15 minutes it logs out.

It was time to go shopping for a new MiFi or as they are called here Pocket Hotspots.  Belgium has a chain of Megga Marts, a bit like a massive PC world / Currys store.

Having bought the MiFi I did some more browsing and came out with a new camera, a phone for Belgium and a WiFi dongel. I am over the moon with the Camera (Lumix DMC-TZ40) and the MiFi which is 4g and gets download speeds of 30+mbs and uploads of 10+mbs.

New toys

While I was on the Segway tour Deb, Jill & Graham went shopping for……….

………well see their blogs.

On the way to Megga Mart I nearly cycled over this cygnet.

It was being chased and pecked by a magpie on the cycle path some way from the water and other swans.  I rescued it from the magpie and put it back in the water. Chirpily  it went back to it’s brood.

Now some pictures.

Big boats:-

There have been many many more.  We were initially afraid these big boat because we were told by another NB owner over here that they speed past without consideration and will cause considerable rocking and straining on ropes, or if you are on pins that they will pull you off the bankside mooring leaving you adrift.  So far this simply not the case. In fact most of the time you don’t even notice them passing and when you do its only gentle movement of the boat.  We are wild moored on pins this afternoon and several have gone by with no effect.  I am set on 5 pins 2 front and rear springs and a centre line.  The wind is causing more movement.

Other photos:-

Personal plate for Deb


Brugge’s oldest pub




2 of the 3 other Airedales we’ve seen


Knott a problem here.  Loads of it everywhere even cultivated into a fence

Another UK Autotrail on the Brugge Ringroad

Brugge at night:-

Scheepsdalenbrug

We did look for the bar with 1000 different bottled beers, but it turned out to be a museum and was shut. We did the next best thing and went to a bar with 100 beers on sale. De Koupes

This is a photo I took with the new camera using the WiFi remote control app on my phone. 

Cheers

With time on my hands I decided I had probably worn out my free motorhome storage at Nieuwpoort Marina and seeing as it was now getting further away I took my bike and public transport to retrieve it back to Brugge. 1 train and 1 bus took just over an hour to get back to the marina, 2 days by boat.

Once back, with the help of Graham I found the problem with my solar panel not charging the batteries.  Some numm nut, I would assume at the motorhome dealership, must have removed the connection when they removed the previous owners satellite system.  A few days of sun should confirm it’s working again.