DESTINATIONS

Bruges – Who the F**K would want go to Bruges?

1264

11th March 2014

Here are some instagram posts from the trip, I wrote a blog on teh road for this onem, it needs to be finished, Its starts at the bottom of the instagram images bellow.

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Blog to be finished later. Forkly links no longer available

So it’s the usual Friday morning. I get to the office after having waited – as usual – for my eternally delayed 9am train. I hit the normal 35d button combination on the offices late 90’s style vending machine; take my burnt coffee to my desk and sit down to enjoy one of Greggs famous steak bake and yum yum breakfast combinations. It’s Friday and I’m ready to laze into the day.

I check my inbox, and for a second my eyes go as wide as they could possibly go. The normal what you up to this weekend chat arises around me yet I am completely unaware that my face has turned to that of a small child with a 99 ice cream cone until my boss slams a paper on my desk and asks why the silly face?

I have a beautifully designed and styled email from one of the better known daily deal websites. 2 day cruse to Amsterdam for £95 per person. I had been looking for a good cheap spring get away with some culture for a few weeks now, this seemed to be the perfect option. I hadn’t ever really been that interested in going Amsterdam before – not sure why it, perplexed by the lack of interest still. After clicking through to the site of P&O I then also found out that for the same price and same port we could also go to Bruges….. My chin hit the floor.

For those who have never seen the film In Bruges, its basically a nitty gritty dark thriller / comedy set within the walls of a sleepy relaxed “fairytale like town” featuring midgets and the 3 of the best Irish an British actors the world has ever seen as the main stars. Bruges has always been pitched to me as a chocolate box town where it is christmas every day! I had made plans to visit a few years back but the price for flights and rail was far to expensive. Within the next hour I had booked 2 nights cruse for the following Thursday (6 days away) with a one night stay over in The Floris hotel, a nice relaxing upmarket boutique hotel (http://www.florishotels.com/) for myself and A ( thats my mrs!). Total cost of £197 for both of us for the cruse, including outside cabin, breakfast, dinner and transfers to the city. Hotel was an extra £50 for one night but that included breakfast and a swimming pool that was open very late at night. Pretty much the perfect get away….. the only problem was we live in Glasgow and the boat departs from Hull…..Only one thing to do.

ROAD TRIP! / MINI ADVENTURE!

We both have these silly memories of going on road trips with our parents, both to different places but always having the same occurrences, Southwates services, and packed lunches with jam sandwiches, thus the plan was formed. My Mini cooper ( I say that as we both drive black mini coopers…. it just kind of happened!) was taken to the carwash, cleaned to within an inch of its life ( a silly futile thing I really should remember not to do before a 5 hours motor way trip in the rain) then packed full of car snacks and both our small ruck sacks. We decided to pack light as we would be carrying all of our belongings with us until at least 3 pm when we could check in. 3 changes of clothes a coat, jumper, hat and gloves and finally and most importantly our cameras and phones. A punched in the postcode to the satnav and within 30 mins we were on the m74 heading southbound and down.

The journey was very pleasant, it was early around 10am when we set off and the roads where quiet, Bonobo, Mogwai and Modselektor would be our soundtrack. Everything was fine until just before the border and A realised that she had in fact left her coat at home.

words to the affect of: OH….MY…GOD I’ve left my coat on the stand! What an idiot! ….Slight panic set in but we decided that we would visit Asda and Matalan when we reached hull and try to pick up a cheap winter coat in the sale. The road trip went quite smooth (well not quite, we almost ran out of petrol at the last 10 miles and also water for the wipers but we survived as we were running late), 5 ish hours in total, we reached Asda and manage to get a really nice Coat and Gloves set for a great deal, 5 minuted later we were at the ports long stay carpark and rolled up next to a fellow mini club members lovely dark blue cooper’s.

HULL PORT

We enter the port early, we quickly get our tickets for meals return and transfers. We had been pre warned by friends who had done the cruise before that there was a very strict no alcohol in hand luggage policy, and they were very thorough with bag searches. The couple in front of us in the security queue, have there entire bag rummaged through and are subjected to lots of enquires. Eventually we approach the security and within minutes I’ve been given a dressing down by the customs officer for not taking my hat off when presenting them with my passport, I was given the point that I would do that in an airport would I, which I responded with, yes I dont take my hat of ever to be honest, as “I have mental hair”. NOT THE BEST REPSONCE! But we were then sharply pushed through security without even a bag check… gutted as the price of wine at sea would be astronomical in comparison to cheap super store plonk.

We finally board the P&O Pride of Bruges, and are given our key to our tiny double bunked outer cabin. The cabin was small and claustrophobic with a small shower and toilet combination, quaint but it would do perfectly for the night ahead.

The Pride of Bruges is owned by a Japanese company and consists of a full capacity asian staffbase. Very nice and always attentive I was immediately very impressed with the warmth and friendly attitude of our hosts. The boat amenities consisted of three floors. Green, Red & Blue. The top floor hosted a small cinema and a moonlight piano bar – a very nice relaxing atmosphere with a very talented fellow scotsman pianist and vocalist. The middle floor was the main arena sporting Duty free, a cafe a small bar and a main dance floor/stage area for entertainment.

Mention Duty free rules

The bottom floor would be the kitchen and dining area, an area that we were very much wanting to visit asap. It had been a long day so far and we were ravenous.

THE WORLD FAMOUS KITCHEN

The kitchen worked similar to most full board restaurants. A massive buffet area with starters consisting of salad, cheese, pate cold meat etc. Maincourse again was a wide section including curries, Yorkshire puddings, stews, chicken, the list was endless. Ass was the very vast and absolutely fantastic array of desserts, im not usually a dessert lover but the selection took my eye and I couldn’t help my self.

I use an app called Forkly on a daily bases to track my food and share what I eat with a large group of fellow food bloggers, I tracked everything I had to eat the entire trip and I will be sharing them with you! Our dinner –

Scottish broth – https://forkly.com/tastes/a2beb24c875211e2a1d812313909d9a2
Pate – https://forkly.com/tastes/c3d77ed2875211e2a1d812313909d9a2
Asian Curry and Chicken breast – https://forkly.com/tastes/d2c55008875311e2958b12313909d9a2
Choc Fge Cake – https://forkly.com/tastes/4b81f62a875611e2a1d812313909d9a2
Chocolate orange cream cake https://forkly.com/tastes/96d6de42875611e2959712313909d9a2
Fruites https://forkly.com/tastes/bfcc6e02875611e2b0a212313909d9a2
Ben and Jerrys Cookie Doe https://forkly.com/tastes/27229b26875711e29f7a12313909d9a2

The only thing I didnt like about the kitchen was that were were kind of rail roaded into buuing beers, we were given a drinks menu but the drinks machine was hidden round the corner from the seating area, hence we didn tknow we could just get some soft drinks for free. Instead we decided to buy 4 bottles of Becks for £10, which is actually a pretty good deal. And the were very good.
https://forkly.com/tastes/97706296875711e29f7a12313909d9a2

After dinner we returned to our cabins for a quick snooze. I had been checking my google maps to see how far out to see we had gotten, I quickly seen that we were just off Cleathorps and that there was a defining land line or levvie that I imagined was keeping full force of the north sea from hitting the boat. Dinner had been quite calm and there was no roll in the boat, how long wouldthis last.

Like a tun of bricks falling from a greta height it hit us. We decided to go to the bar to get a bottle of wine and play some cards. The sea was pretty rough now. Pensions rolling around like toddlers unaware of how to use there feet. Pint glasses swaying back and forth on the bar. We got a great seat in the moonlight lounge, the pianist was great and we orderd some more beer and finally a bottle of house red and rose for £12 – https://forkly.com/tastes/a0c4f826876011e2958b12313909d9a2 after a few games of cards and slightly “burst” from wine and sway of the sea we headed to bed for a night of creaking and swaying. The night passed rather slowly, I nearly fell out of the top bunk at one point. Eventually got to sleep quite late on but was woken by the ships wake up call at 6.30. I woke up feeling slightly battered by mother nature and also slightly hungover.

We headed to breakfast to see much the same as the night before, great selections of cereals and cold meats. Along with a full English breakfast. We had

Bread with cheese and nutella – https://forkly.com/tastes/47b2d3aa87c111e2b67112313909d9a2
Full breakfast – https://forkly.com/tastes/64056d2487c111e2abf912313909d9a2

We checked out of the room early and waited an hour or so to finaly dock in Zeebruges port.

We were one of the first off the boat and were quickly through passport controll and on our connecting bus to Bruges central bus station. The moment had arrived, I was going to finally have my “In Bruges” experience.
WHO WOULD WANT TO GO TO F**KING BRUGES? heres some more photos