Day 5 - A Day in Bruges

Let’s start with the football from last night. With loads of sports bars around, I figured that I would have no problem at all finding it on somewhere, but in the end I had to start asking bar staff. In the end, one kind barman put it on at the back of the pub, but said it would have to be on silent as there was going to be live music. It turned out that I was not alone in wanting to watch the game though, as there were about ten of us by half time. It was rather odd having a lovely Belgian-Irish singer performing ballads as we got more and more nervous… and then very excited! What a match. I think I aged about 10 years in 120 minutes, but very excited for Sunday now. I am keeping an eye out online in case I can find a ticket that would necessitate an epic train trip to Switzerland on Sunday.

Onto today, my final full day in Belgium. I caught a train to Bruges, with the plan being a good day of sightseeing.

The buildings are certainly beautiful, and I enjoyed a walk around, collecting lots of AdLabs as I went and learning about the history of the city.

Whilst I did find Bruges to be rather tourist-filled (as Clare G had told me I might - unfortunately I ran out of time for a trip to Gent though!), the geocaching was brilliant. There was a whole tour of AdLabs at the Provincial Palace, loads of virtual caches at key locations, and some very creative traditional caches - my favourite being one where you had to put a code into a bicycle pannier, to then get a puzzle sheet, involving finding features on buildings around the Market Square. That then provided a code for the second pannier to get the cache. Much fun was had.

In the afternoon I had a ticket to climb to Belfry. The 366 steps were a good warm-up for Saturday’s parkrun, and the views at the top were definitely worth it.

I decided that after that climbing I deserved a banana split whilst sorting out a few emails etc, and then set about finding a nice boat tour on the canal to end the day.

I have had another great day and have loved my time in Belgium 🇧🇪. Up next, the Netherlands 🇳🇱.

Distance covered by train 🚆: 545km

Geocaches today: 4 traditionals, 6 virtuals and 31 AdLabs.

Total trip geocaches: 7 traditionals, 12 virtuals and 144 AdLabs

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