BRUGES, BELGIUM.

Bruges has always seemed magical to me, ever since moving to Belgium, going there had been on my to do list, but for many reasons I never got there. A couple of months ago, Sander's host family from Sri Lanka got into contact with him, to let him know that they would be staying in Bruges for a couple of days, and seeing as it isn't so far from Antwerp, if they could meet up.

As soon as I found out about this I was over the moon, I would finally get to go to Bruges, and with none other than my love. Sander got us a great deal on a hotel room, we booked our train tickets and packed our bags and we were out of there. We'd been itching to go somewhere new ever since coming back from Bucharest, so this was the perfect opportunity.

Once we got there, we booked into the hotel which was nothing special, just your basic IBIS hotel, we freshened up and headed out the door to make our way to the centre.

The weather was amazing, at least 25 degrees but felt more like 35. After walking around for a little bit, we finally found his host family and joined them in a restaurant whilst they finished their lunch. We then set off all together to explore Bruges.

We went through countless little side streets, enjoying the amazing architecture and exploring all of the little independent shops, selling some of the coolest and strangest things I've ever seen in Belgium. Our day was pretty simple, we did as much exploring as possible in between café breaks, all whilst enjoying the sun.

Everywhere you look, every corner you go around, you'll see something amazing. From little boats whizzing around on the canal, to horse carriages carrying around tourists.

After a full day of exploring, the host family left and we decided to get some dinner. We chose to eat in a little restaurant on one of the main squares, nothing fancy because we didn't want to break the bank. After dinner, we wandered around for a little while through the deserted streets, had a look in some more freaky shops, including one shop that felt like you'd entered Asia, hello incense and beautiful stones! After a while we found a really cute little pub and decided to have a drink there. One drink turned into several as you can imagine, and we ended up having a great chat with the bar owner, all about the different beers that he sold and the different people he got in the bar on a day to day basis. The bar was really sweet, it had random bras hanging from the ceiling, different currencies taped to all of the walls and loads of notes left on coasters attached to the ceiling and walls.
A couple of hours later we dragged our intoxicated selves back through the streets of Bruges, all the way back to our hotel.

One of the many strange things you can find in some of the shops in Bruges.
Think this photo speaks for itself really...

Things got a bit silly. 

Gorgeous pub, best beer I've tasted. 

Nice to know that even whilst intoxicated we can still take a good photo. 

The next day we decided to get up early and head back into the centre before taking the train back to Antwerp in the evening. We walked around all day, discovered loads of new squares and even an old nunnery that had the most beautiful daffodils covering the grounds.

After walking around for hours in my new shoes that I had to buy (because stupid me only brought my chelsea boots, bad move) we decided that we were tired and hungry and hopped on the train back to Antwerp.