Eurotrip 2014, Part 18: In Bruges (Briefly)

At long, long last, I’m sharing the final chapter of my 2014 Eurotrip, nearly three years after the previous installment. I suppose that I delayed this entry for so long because of how disappointing the day was. I had originally planned an extensive recounting of the problems encountered on this tour (which I alluded to earlier in this series), but in the end I decided it’s not worth it, especially since the company did give me a partial refund, so I’m just going to briefly summarize the events of the day.

July 13, 2014: We got a late start when we departed Amsterdam for Bruges because we had to wait roughly 30 minutes on the bus for our guide to arrive with the group from the hostel. When we finally reached Bruges, the bus driver drove around for another 20 minutes not knowing where to park. He eventually figured it out but then got into an argument with the guide about how much time we would spend there, which the bus driver apparently won. So by the time we finally departed the bus, we had already lost about an hour.

Then, after hustling to the center of the city, we were informed that we had to meet back at the bus in just over two hours. I was stunned. Two hours? What was the point of even stopping here? That was barely enough time to grab a bite to eat and run around to snap a few photos. I certainly didn’t have time to wait in line and climb to the top of the famous bell tower. To make matters worse, it was raining pretty heavily, so I decided to eat first in the hope that the rain would clear. For the most part it continued to rain, though it did finally clear during the last half-hour of my visit, so I hustled around to fit in as many rainless photos as I could.

Bruges had been the entire reason I booked this particular tour, so to barely spend any time there was a massive disappointment. Needless to say, I (and many others on the tour) felt a bit ripped off. On top of that, it was my last day in Europe before flying home the following morning, so an otherwise fantastic trip ended on a sour note, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Such is travel.

Oh well, I guess I’ll have to make a special trip to Belgium in the future so I can take my time and really experience this lovely city. In the meantime, here are a few of the photos I managed to take during my short visit. Click on any photo to open a gallery.