Brugge

  The people from IAESTE Leuven organized a day trip to Brugge. During this trip, all the main attractions of Brugge was seen, although there still is quite a lot considering the whole city is UNESCO world heritage site. For lunch, the group split going to two different places. One of the IAESTE Leuven people had a lot of good stories about Brugge. At the end of the trip, a few of us went to a nice bar in the middle of a small street. It was a great day trip.

  Brugge has many old buildings and churches that are great to go and explore. The Belfort was very large and impressive. The Basilica of the Holy Blood that has the blood Christ, and it was worth a visit to see. The Church of Our Lady, Bruges, which has a sculpture by Michaelangelo called Madonna of Bruges, was visited. Unfortunately, we did not go see the famous sculpture because it was inside a museum that cost money to go visit.

Here are some photos the church that contains the Michaelangelo sculpture 

These next photos are from the church that has the blood of Christ.

This is a photo of the Belfort

  Some of the places we visited had a story attached to them that an IAESTE member knew. There was a nice bridge that people go with their loved ones because, according to a story, it was built by a man grieving about losing his loved one. She also talked about a house that was connected to a church so that the former, rich, inhabitants could go to church without going outside. The house is now a museum of some sort. There is also a story about how a man killed a bear with his bare hands (http://www.oxygenium.be/thebearofbruges/), but I don't think there was a building connected to it.

  One of the first stops in the city was to walk through the Beguinage. This was a type of covenant where women could "marry god" and live there. These women were not like nuns since they were allowed to keep their riches and grow them. There was also a church there to look at.

This is the Church at the Beguinage

Here is some of the houses at the Beguinage

  The lunch I had was a rabbit stew and fries. It was at a nice Belgian kitchen.

  There was also a boat trip during the visit. The trip went around all the canals in Brugge, and the driver spoke about everything we were seeing in multiple languages. I was very impressed with how easily the guide switched between languages. It was a really great tour and I'd recommend it to anyone going to Brugge.

  At the end of the trip, a few of us went to a bar towards the end of the smallest street in Brugge. It was a very nice bar with a wide selection of beers and three floors. To find a place to sit our group had to go all the way to the top of the bar. I'd recommend it for anyone wanting to have a nice beer in Brugge, and others must agree with me since it is listed #1 on WikiVoyage for drinking.

Here is the WikiVoyage page for Brugge https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Bruges

Some other photos from Brugge

This is where all the swans live for some reason