The first of our planned stops was to the Bubbles At Home store in search of some of its wonderful soap. On a trip to Ghent earlier in the year on Azura we’d picked up a bar on a whim and discovered it was incredible. We’d checked before this mini cruise and seen that there was another store in Bruges and that it was open on Sunday so this time we stocked up.

Just a few doors away from the soap store was our next stop, the Torture Museum, a small museum of the history of torture located in one of Europe’s oldest prisons. This is one of those places where you really need to take the time to read all the descriptions of the various devices on display to truly appreciate what a barbaric species humans are but there were some fascinating revelations too, such as the early requirement of needing more than just one eye-witness or circumstantial evidence to convict of crimes that triggered the perverse logic of utilising torture as an evidence-gathering mechanism.

The entry fee to the torture museum included a postcard memento which was a nice touch. Highly recommended trip if you’re ever in Bruges.

We resumed walking for a little bit after this to take some more photos and hunt down some place that would sell us beer.

Finding a couple of places to sit down and try some local beers did not prove to be a problem. The first of these was a small café with 20 beers on tap. We only had one each and timed our visit to perfection as we sat and watched hail pelt down outside.

The second place we had a drink was somewhere we’d been before during our Crown Princess cruise visit a few months prior, the Brewery Bourgogne des Flandres. On some future visit we must get around to touring the brewery there but for this particular trip we satisfied ourselves with just a drink each as our time in Bruges was limited.

The remainder of the time was spent casually walking some of the streets of Bruges again, taking a few photos here and there, before making our way back to where we would catch our coach back to the 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.

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.

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.

But first, a word from our sponsor, Technology Drama.

It was a time of chaos and panic. A time of mayhem. Confusion reigned, and for the valiant people of this state-of-the-art, ocean-crossing vessel the unmistakable sound of hundreds of sets of gnashing teeth rose to drown out everything. The app wasn’t working. Drama! With the technology!

In times like this a hero will step forward; a champion of the downtrodden masses, offering aid to strangers and friends alike. His only need? You had to be using an Android phone, because fuck knows how anything works on Apple.

That hero’s name was Mark. Technology Drama is his story.

Yeah, you came for a cruise travelogue and the promise of tales of Belgian breweries but you’re going to have to skip over the next few paragraphs if you don’t want to hear about the exciting world of mobile phone app settings.

So, on the morning of our visit to the port of Zeebrugge the app wasn’t working on Valiant Lady for an awful lot of people. The app simply explained that access was denied and the only thing that could be seen were the titles of any messages. Pretty much most people who had newer phones were affected, and that included us, and the titles of two of the messages gave us cause for concern since we had booked a shore excursion for later in the day. One message said “Sorry, your excursion has been cancelled” and the other said “Here is the ashore time for your excursion” but both had the same timestamp so we didn’t know whether one superseded another; whether our excursion had really been cancelled or whether our excursion had simply been moved to another time. We needed to get into those message details to read further but access was denied.

Our Bruges shore excursion wouldn’t have been until mid-afternoon and we saw no reason to assume that if there was a rescheduling of our excursion it would be vastly different time-wise so figured we’d have breakfast then hunt down a member of the crew to see if someone could at least get us access to our messages or confirm whether and when the tour was going ahead. However, I’m a fast eater, which gave me some sitting about time while my wife was sullenly finishing up her breakfast (they’d got her order wrong) so I started playing about with my phone, looking at the various options for the app, then the connection settings to the ship’s Wi-Fi. And that’s when I noticed a setting I’d not seen before that increased privacy when connecting to public Wi-Fi by randomising the phone’s apparent MAC address.

Hmm, I thought. What if they’re using the MAC address to identify users rather than a generated token for the login credentials? Wouldn’t that cause problems if the address kept changing? I pondered. What if I disable that for the Virgin connection?

You know that bit in Die Hard where the power is cut to Nakatomi Plaza and the electromagnetic seal protecting the vault collapses? In my mind that’s exactly what played out as my app sprung to life. A minute later and I’d got both my phone and my wife’s working with Valiant Lady’s intranet again and we could see the messages.

The messages didn’t help clear anything up in the slightest so we still had to head off in search of some crew but in the meantime I tweeted the solution for Android users in case anyone was in the same situation, which helped some people. At the first helpdesk area we found there was one man having his phone looked at by two technicians and two others sitting waiting. We stood there for a moment until I asked if they were having app problems. Everyone nodded. I explained the solution about the dynamic MAC setting on the connection. While this didn’t help the guy first in the queue because Apple do things differently, I saw the two other people suddenly pull out their phones, fiddle around, then leave. I think I helped them. Sadly, the helpdesk crew couldn’t tell us about the excursions and sent us to the other helpdesk area. After a wrong turning that saw us finding our way into an apparent crew area accidentally (more signs with arrows please, Virgin) we reached the other helpdesk area. There were more crew there because there were a lot more people waiting to have things checked. I overheard some people moaning about not being able to access the app and again provided my solution but Apple users were everywhere. Following a short wait we got to a member of the crew who confirmed that the excursion we were booked on was still going ahead and it had been moved an hour earlier in the day. Phew. What a saga.

One other bone of contention we overheard here was a confusion regarding the timing of activities. Ship time and shore time were one hour apart, and ship-organised trips were running at ship time but shore-organised trips (which the ship was also organising just to add to the confusion) were running at shore time, and there was no indication which were which. We talked to one couple in the queue here who’d gone ashore to meet their bus for their trip only to find it had left an hour earlier.

Later that day, Virgin would resolve the issue with denied access for everyone. I suspect they disabled the use of the MAC address verification.

Bruges Brewery Tour Shore Excursion

Our tour was going ahead, a little earlier than originally planned, and, importantly, this meant we didn’t have to come up with another plan for the day that might have involved taking a walk into nearby Blankenberge or taking public transport to not-so-nearby Bruges.

We didn’t do a whole lot while waiting around for our tour time to approach, limiting ourselves to a quick nose around on the aft deck (very cold wind out there), then some reading in the extremely quiet ship. The most comfortable (for height), most practical (for light) seats for reading in were around the Draught Haus area. Virgin’s seating theme on Valiant Lady is often wild and wacky, but this does tend towards the soft and low and therefore liable to make you look like a right tit when trying to stand up if you’ve got dodgy knees or are just plain getting on in years.

Knowing we’d be drinking once ashore we made certain to grab a small bite to eat in the Galley. This turned out to be some superb garlic or rosemary bread and a selection of small, pretty, sickeningly-sweet, lovely, filling cakes.

The time of our Virgin shore excursion arrived.

Valiant Lady’s Bruges tour didn’t involve any meeting ahead of time in a dedicated venue, nor did it involve wearing stickers. In keeping with Virgin’s philosophy of a more laid-back, figure-it-out-for-yourself approach to organisation we simply knew we had to be dockside at the departure time. We were dockside ten minutes before because we don’t like to hold anyone up, and from there it was a case of looking at one long queue waiting to board a single-decker bus, and a couple of people hanging around outside a minibus. After asking a question of someone with a clipboard we headed off to the smaller of the two, were assured that this was the correct bus, and boarded.

In total, nineteen people were on the tour bus, including us, and we quickly surmised that most of them knew each other based on comments and shouts and laughing. As the bus set off and our guide started talking about the area and the plan for the tour it was explained that we were actually two groups in one, with four people just getting dropped off and having time to spend in the Belgian city on their own. So, just the fifteen of us from the entire ship had opted to pay for this shore excursion.

We’d been to Bruges a few times before – and you can click on that link to read about those occasions and what we learnt or saw then – so anticipated that we wouldn’t really pick up any new knowledge on the first part of the tour, the walk to the brewery. However, that wasn’t the case, with us walking a route we hadn’t done before on the way from the bus drop-off point and having several new things pointed out to us, including Ten Wijngaerde. The Princely Beguinage Ten Wijngaerd (to give it its full name) presently serves as a convent for Benedictine nuns, but prior to 1927 it was a beguinage (no, me neither, but I’ll explain in a second) and is the only preserved beguinage in Bruges. A beguinage – see, I said I’d explain – can be thought of as a convent for lay religious women who haven’t taken vows, and in countries such as Belgium from around the thirteenth century they took the form of buildings such as a church, boarding rooms, infirmaries, bakeries, etc. arranged around a central courtyard. The area might be protected by walls and gates but these were left open during the day so that people inside and out could come and go as they pleased.

With just fifteen people on a tour you might think this would be an easy experience for the local guide. You would be wrong. Our walking tour took the form of us closely following the guide as he reached something he wanted to point out, him turning around to talk about it, him looking past us down the street we’d just walked, and him looking at us and asking where everyone was. We didn’t know, but they would all eventually drift up, or a few would who would then tell the guide “No, don’t worry about the others, they know where to go.” It was strange, it was chaotic, and it felt rude at first to our experienced-cruise-excursion-taker selves, but it was all good-humoured.

At one point we suddenly twigged that one woman who’d been doing a better job at keeping up than the others was a member of the Virgin Voyages crew as she started asking us questions about how we were finding things. It’s typical to have one or two crew on tours to keep an eye on passengers. We mentioned that we felt sorry for the guide and she smiled and said that most of the others had been to Bruges before so they didn’t need to hear the tour explanations so much. Okay, but that was true of us as well and it still felt a little disrespectful, and when, on occasion, all the group were together to hear about some building or other – near the Gruuthusemuseum and Church of Our Lady Bruges, for instance, where a connecting passageway had been built between the structures – there were plenty of very good questions asked by clearly interested tourists.

We then reached a point where the guide explained where he would take us for the next part of the tour but that was shot down by another couple of our group. “No, I think that’s enough. Let’s have a break for some shopping. We can all meet up somewhere just before the brewery.” My wife and I were starting to suspect there were more than just one or two members of crew with us, and when we mentioned this to the woman we’d talked to before she said that she and a number of others had been to Bruges a week or so before on a fact-finding mission.

A little bit of shopping suited us as we wanted to stock up on some soap from Bubbles At Home. Some people hit Bruges for the chocolate but for us it’s this place and its absolutely fantastic soap that we’ll always hit to take goodies back home.

We didn’t have time to give any of the smaller museums a worthwhile look around but took in the views for a while in the market square opposite the belfry while a group of Spanish tourists demonstrated that they had not learnt the concept of personal space while climbing all over the walls behind where we were sitting so that someone could take their photos. We steadfastly refused to move despite the horror of appearing in some strangers’ memories of a visit to somewhere because we’ve long ago passed that point into grumpy old age.

As we headed down to our meeting point with the tour group on the Nepomucenusbrug we popped into 2be, a small but well-stocked shop for souvenirs, outside which, in an alley alongside it, was the Beer Wall. We’d heard of this but never seen it before and can confirm it was both a wall and contained beer.

Once most of the group had arrived at the designated place at or rather just after the designated time (microscopic sigh) we were led to the brewery: Bourgogne des Flandres. We gathered in a small courtyard area while our guide went back to see if the others were going to turn up and once everyone finally had we were introduced to the brewery tour guide and a glass of beer was given out to everyone to start. It would be fair to describe the brewery guide’s style of presentation as manic. A lot of fun, in other words.

We were taken through numerous, often cramped rooms, up stairs, down stairs, onto a rooftop section looking north towards the belfry over the rooftops of the Bruges buildings, shown old equipment, modern equipment, had fermentation styles explained to us, saw vats fermenting beer, shown a video describing how the brewery had changed over the centuries, and shown different sorts of hops with explanations about why Belgian beer and British beer are different (it’s to do with hop sex, as I’m sure you knew already). At one point our guide made a reference to people getting high and singled out the female member of crew with whom we’d talked. Being Latina she loudly proclaimed “I think I’ve just been stereotypically racially-profiled” but it was said in a light-hearted manner.

The tour ended with a combination tasting and blending in a side room in the main public area of the brewery. Sat on two long benches we were given some lambic beer and some brown beer with guidance on how to taste them. Most people seemed to favour the lambic (spontaneous fermentation) but it’s a little too sour for my personal taste; for me, the maltier, brown ale (top fermentation) was nicer. We were then encouraged to blend the two beers to try to get the best taste. Mixtures and results were all over the place but it was a lot of fun to hear the comments from everyone around as they were mostly disappointed with whatever concoction they’d come up with. Snacks were present in the form of pretzels, meat balls, cold meats, and cheese, and it’s fair to say that they were met with universal approval. We then finished up our time in the brewery with a glass of the proper blend of lambic and brown in the red ale that’s produced and sold by Bourgogne des Flandres.

During the tasting and blending session I had a short chat with Billy, a guy sitting opposite me who looked rich as all hell: immaculately presented, camel overcoat, Hermès Birkin bag with handle wrapped in a scarf to prevent oils from his hands damaging it, jewellery you could see from outer space. Yeah, turned out he was another member of the crew as well. During our talk I asked him just how many people on this tour were crew. After a quick glance around the room he said eleven.

“So, just four of us passengers actually booked to come on this tour!?”

“Yes! We were amazed when we heard you were coming!”

It was quite a shock, though perhaps indicative of the sort of people who’d choose to go on a maiden cruise and a weekend one to a very nearby country at that. It certainly explained why the group as a whole had been more boisterous than we were used to, more chatty, more prone to altering the parameters of the excursion on the fly.

It was nice to listen in to some of the crew talking, though; especially in regards to the tour guides. “We have got to get [the brewery guide] on the ship at some point. He’s a scream!” and “Why isn’t [the general tour guide] drinking and eating with us? We need to make this more inclusive.” Good to hear that sort of adjusting of the experiences being discussed.

When it came time to leave we were directed back into the main bar area and were handed a bag each to take on our way. Each person ended up with two 70cl bottles of the red ale to take with them. Everyone was surprised and everyone was happy, even if it meant we were all clanking our way back through the now-dark streets of Bruges towards the bus. There were photo stops along the way because cats just don’t like being herded.

If you can remember that far back, there had been another four people on our bus originally who were being dropped off to explore Bruges on their own. We were supposed to meet them just on the outskirts of the city but when we arrived (somehow at the correct time) there was no sign of them. A bit of standing around in the cold ensued with some phone calls being made by the guide and some of the crew. An attempt at a group photo took place without us featuring in it despite much cajoling. It was then suggested that perhaps the others had made their way back to the bus already so half the group went off to check while half remained behind. We opted to remain behind to keep the guide company as much as anything else and about ten minutes later one of our half of the group got a call from the other half of the group to say that no, the others weren’t on the bus, but that they’d been told that they were all making their own way back to the ship. As Valiant Lady was staying overnight in Belgium that wouldn’t be a huge issue.

The bus ride from Bruges to Zeebrugge was entertainingly loud and full of amusing comments about the tour. It had been entertaining on the way out, but now we’d all had some beers too. At one point we spotted the moon starting to rise. You’ve seen the moon rise before, I’m sure. It’s more orange than white, and it always appears larger closer to the horizon.

“It’s so big. Are we closer to the moon here in Belgium?” asked one of the American crew. Well, we laughed.

Evening Aboard Valiant Lady

We bumped into another cruise blogger as we boarded Valiant Lady. She’d been booked on another tour that should have included drinks in Belgium but this had been simply cancelled, possibly due to lack of interest. When we mentioned how few actual passengers were on our tour she rightly wondered why she and anyone else who had booked the same as her weren’t at least offered the brewery tour instead.

We’d arrived back on the ship an hour earlier than we’d initially expected because our tour had started an hour earlier which meant we now had some extra time before our dinner reservation. We decided to fill in some of this time with a sit down at the diner and some alcoholic milkshakes from the Social Club. Bloody gorgeous.

Our evening meal in The Wake was a mixed affair. The food was lovely and venue is fabulous, but the service in a restaurant for which we had the last possible sitting and which was at best 40% full was glacial. As I stared out of the aft-facing windows into the blackness of the port at night I imagined continents raising from the sea bed through tectonic activity, erosion fashioning out landscapes, cycles of evolution populating and depopulating this world, before cataclysms erased all evidence of it ever existing between courses.

The later-than-we-expected late night for us was spent in the company of friends, first at On The Rocks where a very good blues band were performing (and where we were treated to an impromptu (maybe) tap dance show from one of the crew), then at the Draught Haus into the early hours where it was easier to actually talk and be heard.

Virgin Voyages Excursion Thoughts

That’s the end of the second day on Valiant Lady – the next day and next travelogue in this series will see the ship leave Zeebrugge for a sea day heading home to Portsmouth – but some concluding thoughts about this brewery tasting tour arranged by Virgin are demanded by the blogging demons.

Whenever you’re talking about a Virgin experience with regards to cruising you’re probably going to be using the phrase “Well, that was different” and this is no exception. Yes, there were some points during the tour early on when we felt that some of the people were being inconsiderate by not keeping up with the guide or in dictating that the tour needed to have its guided bit cut down, but that was when we thought they were a group of passengers like us. Once we realised that, realistically, we were being treated to tagging along with a ship’s crew outing, and that this was as much a bonding and learning experience for them as it was an unexpected behind-the-scenes look at how the crew operate on these ships for us then the feel of the whole thing changed.

There was more smiling, more laughter, more chatting with the guide, and more chatting with fellow tourists (even if they, strictly speaking, weren’t) than we’ve had on any other excursion. Alcohol always helps, of course, but there was plenty going on before we even had a drop. The tour of the brewery itself was also excellent in its own right and can be recommended highly, with a great mix of information about the hows and the whys of the brewing process at the start plus the fun tasting and blending part at the end. Our guides were very different people, and neither could be faulted, the company we had was great with every member of the crew we spoke to being perfect representatives of Virgin as a whole, and this will go down as one of our most favourite shore excursions we’ve taken to date.

The original photo was decidedly flat and rather dull, suffering from a lack of exposure caused by the variation in light between the sky at the end of the street and the shadowed street itself. For this rework the image has been sharpened, had contrast added, and had the colour boosted. Acid treatment to enhance some of the greens and reds in particular has been overlaid with low opacity just to get a little more depth into all the elements. The detail in the clouds has been brought out a bit and the overall colour temperature has been brought up a little too.