Brugges

The lady that was working at the Blaarmeersen campground in Ghent mentioned to us that the Brugge campsite was probably full too. She then provided us with two options for campsites no where near Brugge, but about 20-30 minutes away. One of the books we purchased for our trip is called “Traveler’s Guide to European Camping”. The reason we purchased this particular book was due to the information it provided about the campsites in Europe. It has 529 pages on the different campgrounds throughout Europe, with some sight-seeing suggestions, info about free-camping… It also mentions everything the particular campsites offer, from the price to how clean the toilets are. Up until this point it has been very useful. It is the third edition, but it was last published in 2004. Thus making the suggested campsite in Brugge a movie theatre. The restaurant the campground had was still there, even the gates, but you could tell they were not in use. Julie jumped into the small field near the gate to confirm this and found an electrical hookup for campers. So that site was no good and it was the only one listed for Brugge in the book. Luckily we had two other suggested campsites from Ghent campground. After we found Camp Memling, it was the closest to Brugge out of the two, they turned us away, but gave us (better) directions to the second campsite, Camp Klein Strand in Jabbeke. This campsite had one caravan spot available but wanted 25 euros for the night. Julie couldn’t accept that price, so we debated in the van in their parking lot until around 8:30, it was 7 when we first showed up, and decided that we needed to charge our laptop, clean our dishes and clean ourselves. But, the campsite was now full and we could pay 20 euros to stay in the parking lot and have access to the facilities, but no electricity. No dice. When I was driving on the E-40 to this particular campsite, I noticed a gas station with what looked like a rest area, so I said lets just try to free camp there for the night and get some sleep and some dinner. Off we went to go find a rest stop. It took about 30 minutes to get to one, but it was well worth the wait. Other campers were doing the same thing at this particular stop, we couldn’t get electricity, but it was free, had food if we wanted it, bathrooms and even showers. However, since we were spending only part of the day in Brugge and then moving on to Jeugdstadion campground in Ypres, we decided not to use the pay showers at the gas station, but keep it in mind for the future. The three campgrounds we looked for didn’t do us a disservice. While driving around I noticed that on a street outside the city center of Brugges there was free parking which was easily a walk-able distance into the market. The only unfortunate thing, was not knowing what the street name was and where. Making a turn by suggestion of Julie, she had spotted a campervan sign, we stumbled across an overnight camping area for campervans. The fee was 16 euros and included electricity. If only we found it the night before we could have had more time in Brugges. So we turned around and kept heading in the direction we were going in. I spotted the street and needed to do a U-turn to park, when I did, I ended up blocking a car trying to turn left, oops, not the first time! This is where Julie and I strolled into town, liking the calm and quite the city provided in the early morning very much. This was the first time we got out of our camper before 9am. We were rewarded with a pleasant walk and some guys feeding the ducks in the park. One guy even threw some bread to Julie so she could feed some. The Market was, as all seem to be, huge, surrounded by churches, government buildings and restaurants. Julie caved, and decided to buy us breakfast at a restaurant in the market square. The Belfort Francais was offering the works, eggs, bacon, toasts and jam, coffee and orange juice for 7.50 euros. But we decided to eat Belgian Waffles instead, plus they were cheaper, 4 euros. It was extremely pleasant sitting there watching the city wake up, having a coffee and a great conversation with Julie, we haven’t had a chance to just talk for a week now and we both needed to take our focus off of traveling for at least a moment. There were so many carriages in the market, all getting set up to take the tourists on a tour of the city. If you don’t know, Brugge center is surrounded by a canal and most of the entrances are grand, huge towers/ gates etc. They have a belfry too, which is in the market, as well as the church, which has bells too. This made for some interesting, albeit awful, chiming. It sounded like a bunch of kids playing with a xylophone. We left Belgium’s most popular tourist town at noon and headed off to Ypres (Ieper), located directly west of Brussels almost on the coast of Belgium.