With breakfast out of the way we had a little bit of time before meeting up to take our excursion into Bruges and as we got our bags ready for the day we got to watch as the Oceania Marina reversed into the dock behind us from our aft balcony viewpoint.

I don’t know much about the Marina cruise ship but it did appear that amongst its passengers were astronauts. Weird.

After our very enjoyable day in Bruges there was time for a few more shots from and of our balcony (to show how large it is again; see also: Crown Princess, Aft Balcony, Departing Southampton) before we settled down to the important job of seeing how far we could progress through the cocktails in the various bars on board the Crown Princess.

The brewery offers a tour of itself and one day when we hit Bruges with plenty of time to spare we intend to take one but for this occasion we made do with selecting from the beers on tap and enjoying something cool, refreshing, and local.

This brought our time in the city to an end so we wandered back to the Walplein where we were to meet up with the rest of our excursion group from the Crown Princess. My photos from this point on consisted of a lot of shooting from the hip, relying on the brightness of the day, a slightly raised ISO level, and a wider aperture to ensure fast enough shots and sharpness even while moving. As a result composition was something of a non-entity but I quite often like taking photos like this as it will produce pictures you wouldn’t normally think to take and they’re not always terrible. Often, but not always.

I wanted to get to the back of the boat for a couple of reasons: I’m quite considerate when it comes to not wanting to spoil other people’s enjoyment of an event so this would mean I wouldn’t have to concern myself with wondering if my camera was blocking someone’s view or the photograph they were just about to take; additionally, it’s quite nice sometimes to get other people in your shots deliberately from a composition and scaling perspective.

It was a lot cooler on the canal than it had been walking around Bruges, as you can imagine. If the weather is warm and you’re getting tired of walking around then a canal boat trip is a great way to rest your feet and cool down. For us, it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been piddling down with rain; it might be the naval port city blood in us but we almost always take a boat trip of some description whenever we’re travelling if the option presents itself.

The boat trip gave everyone a chance to look at some of the medieval architecture of Bruges either from closer than they otherwise would have been able to or from a different angle. In terms of information imparted to us on the tour, however, we did have a slight issue in that we appeared to be mostly going over the same ground and same buildings of interest that we’d covered on the walking tour. This wasn’t an awful thing but it would have been nicer if the day’s tour as a whole had taken this into consideration with far less of an overlap. For this particular tour arranged through Princess Cruises the duplication of content was a minor gripe on an otherwise lovely day in the Belgian city.

We eventually made it back to the starting point of our canal boat tour of Bruges where after some waiting around to let a few other boats navigate the narrow waterways we disembarked for a spot of free time in the city prior to our departure back to the cruise ship.

Most trips to Bruges invariably end with you finding yourself on the outskirts with a short walk into the city, typically over one or two bridges that span the many canals. The walk is no more than five minutes and the ground is level, though cobbled in places (reflecting the medieval heritage of Bruges) so care should be taken. Indeed, at the conclusion of our excursion one of our party tripped on a cobble and crashed to the floor, knocking herself out briefly. Her husband, a retired doctor, assured everyone she was okay but I hope she got some proper checking over by the ship’s medical staff once back onboard.

Bruges thrived from the 12th century onwards owing to its location that was a natural meeting point for several trading routes across Europe and its access to the sea via the canals for which the city is well known.

Bruges is one of the most well-preserved medieval cities in Europe. Despite its reduction in importance from the 16th century onwards it underwent several attempts to flourish by changing the industries and trades under which it had previously prospered. In the late 19th century the city was promoted as a tourist destination to wealthy Victorians. During both World Wars the city was occupied by the Germans and suffered hardly any damage at all. The city was liberated by the Canadians in World War 2 and a bridge in that country’s honour was pointed out to us when we finished our excursion.

One of the notable sights of Bruges included De Halve Maan Brewery, the oldest brewery in the city we were told, and still brewing its own ales. We fully intended to visit this place during our free time at the end of the excursion (as we’re fond of a local ale) but the place was absolutely heaving and we ended up finding somewhere else. We stopped many times to be shown sights of significant interest in Bruges such as the city hall, the Belfry, St Salvatore’s Cathedral, and the Groenerei canal. In the wide open expanse of the Markt (the market square) there was a statue of Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck, leaders of a revolt against the French in the early 1300s.

After around an hour we had completed our walking tour portion of our Bruges excursion and made our way to Mariastraat where we would be boarding a canal boat for the water-based portion of our day out in Belgium.