Backpacking Brugge

This article was written by Amy Rogers, a student from London who went backpacking Brugge in August 2010:

Backpacking Brugge the town

I loved Brugge. It was a quaint quiet town, very pretty and surrounded by canals. I would recommend going on the canal boat trip, which costs €6 and lasts about 30 minutes, but it is lovely to see the area from the canal. The feel of the town is lovely, the area is completely untouched by modernisms, for instance they aren’t allowed satellite dishes on their houses as it ruins the landscape of the area. They also have renovation competitions each year, so that people look after the upkeep of their houses, so it is pretty!

Backpacking Brugge scenery

The town doesn’t have too much to offer, except for the scenery. There are lovely churches and it does have a chocolate factory, which was good fun, but only really because of the free chocolate! There is a Belgium Fries museum, but we didn’t go into it. Most of the hostels offer a bike hiring service, which is highly recommended as you can cycle to the beach (takes around an hour) and the cycle route is meant to be very pretty.

The hostels I stayed in were the Snuffle hostel and the Passage hostel. The Snuffle hostel is highly recommended, it was lovely, the staff were friendly and it was very close to the centre of the town, also it only cost around €17 per night, which included breakfast. The Passage was nice as well, but not as good. It was a little darker than the Snuffle with no breakfast included, but it was cheap as it cost around €18 per night and it was still central in the town.

Also with Brugge it is only about an hour and a half on the train to Brussels so you can always pop over there. The cost of things there isn’t too bad, unfortunately with Europe they mainly serve in half measures for beer so half a beer would be around €3.50. We did have some local food which was a stew like thing. We had that in the Passage and that was around €13 . I think that because Brugge is laid back and scenic that it is perfect for couples as the map that we had, had little kissing spots, where it is a picturesque spot!!