(16/4/2011) We already had plans for April, and in order to keep our food money for the month, we avoid doing more than one plan per month. But this time, Sergio is coming from Thursday 14 until Monday 25, and from the 20 to the 25 we are going to visit Stockholm. Since there was no plans for the weekend, and by chance I found some brochure for Liege, I decided to check on the ticket prices. They were pretty cheap, so I told Sergio, and he said that he preferred Bruges, so I checked again and found a very nice offer, from Aachen to Liege for 11,90 Euros and from Liege to Bruges for 10,30 Euros.
So we booked the tickets, and started looking for a Hostal -Hotels are not that cheap, the cheapest that we found was 90 euros per night-. I asked around, but at the end we did not book anything, we decided to simply try our luck there (bad idea...)We started our trip on saturday at 8:30 am. We stopped in Liege at 10.30 and took some pictures, it looked promessing, but we decided to go first to Bruges and then, on the way back, to Liege. We finally reached Bruges at something like 1 pm (after some stops in Brussels, and some food).
We started exploring, by going in to the middle of the town, basically following all the other tourists, and taking pictures in the way.
We reached a very beautiful square, filled with cafés and restaurants, and we found live music, an amazing orchestra playing right there. We went to the river and found out that all the swans belong to the city (and they are all marked), and of course we took more pictures ;)
We visited then the Basilica of the Holly Blood, amazingly beautiful! and as a side story, we found a sign bewaring turists about pickpocketing, we found that interesting, in a place so calm, so organized, so polite, even here one find thieves.
We saw the Burg square, with the city hall and the Markt.
The cherry of the trip was a boat ride in the channels, asking the swans permission to pass by :), discovering the oldest houses around the channel and the beauty of the arquitecture, lightened by the flowers of the spring.
Thinking of our pocket we had a fast food lunch, in the middle of the markt.
Later that day we went to see the Madrid Barcelona game in a samll pub, and after that we looked for a hostal, hotel or anything, but everything was full, so we spent our night walking around and in the Bruges train station. Next day we took the first train back, and needless to say, we were too tired to stop in Liege.
As a day trip, this was much more than anyone can ask.
