Our hostess Doreen prepared a beautiful breakfast for us.  Cheeses, baked goods, coffee, yogurt, kiwi and fresh squeezed OJ.  Can’t beat fresh squeezed OJ  😉

After breakfast she takes us across the street where she has a space where her bikes are stored.  Gives us the lowdown on the ins and outs of the space and a map with bicycle trails on it.  We are going walking first and will take the bikes out later.

We head into the main square of Bruges.  It is Monday and all of the museums are closed today.  There are day tours from Amsterdam and probably other places, so I suspect that it will be a quieter day in town for those tours.

There is a Geocache right in the square.  The GPS has us close.  We see another woman wandering and looking around like us 🙂  She asks if we are geocaching and we confirm we are.  She is from Paris and we join forces.  We chat and simultaneously spot the cache!  It is soooo obvious now!  The bike racked with many others is painted in the geocache colours and has a geocache sticker on the bar.  It is a two parter.  The bike has 2 panniers, one marked A and one B.  They are both locked with combination locks.  The code for A is in the cache hint and the code for B is a puzzle.  There are sheets inside pannier A that show 6 images of things possibly in the square.

The Parisian lady and I are working on the puzzle when a family from Belgium join in.  Eventually the 6 of us solve the puzzle.  Very fun.  I was the only Anglo.  The family and the Parisian lady had French in common.  I tried to keep up 🙂

 

We take bikes along with the map of cycling paths and off we go to a little village call Damme.  The photo to the right is where we are waiting for the large boat to the left to go through the lock.  A bit larger lock than along the Rideau canal.

 

We arrive in Damme and interestingly enough we need a beer.
This beer is called Brugse Zot.

Where does the name Brugse Zot come from?

For many centuries, the people of Bruges have been known to their Flemish neighbors, as “Bruges Fools”.

 

 

We are finding Bruge much more to our pace.  Slower, quieter, CALMER than the weekend in Amsterdam.  In Amsterdam you are constantly on the lookout for speeding cyclist or scooterists.

Strolling around Bruges we stop for a beer and washroom at a place along the canal.  Washroom finished we wait for 15 minutes for the waiter to take our order.  He is in no hurry and a toddler at the next table is not a happy camper.  We waited, we move on.  A couple corners later we see a place down the street in front of a church.  It looks interesting.  The actual restaurant is across the street from the church.  It doesn’t have room for a patio, so probably made a deal with the church to use its front yard.  A couple great appies.

 These are bonus shots from the Stu Master