Zeebrygge

Eat

thumb|right|The Great Market square with restaurants

If you are looking for a great place to eat in Bruges, avoid all of the restaurants in the central market square ("Grote Markt"). No matter how pleasant the view from there may look, they will offer you low-quality, overpriced food, served to you by waiters who are as rude and as slow as they are underpaid. One tactic used by such tourist trap restaurants at the central market is to present items (e.g. bread) as if they were free with your meal, then charge you for them. Even water may be charged at an exorbitant or more for a small bottle. Another scheme to bilk the traveller is to quote absurdly-high prices (such as for a single serving of fries), then claim to be offering "a 10% discount for locals".

You will, however, find great food if you wander off the beaten track. The historical centre of Bruges does have many pleasant and cozy restaurants with affordable and high-quality food to offer if you know the right addresses! Find a street with more locals than tourists and ask somebody about a good place to eat at. The locals will be glad to help (English proficiency in Dutch-speaking Belgium is generally quite good).

Drink

The area just north of the performing arts centre has various cafes, most with sufficient beer selections, such as Café Leffe.

Sleep

thumb|Houses at Koningin Elisabethlaan 2, 4 and 6 During the summer Bruges is a very popular tourist destination; reservations are probably preferable.

During the winter (Nov-Mar) a number of hotels offer a midweek promotion: 3 nights for the price of 2, if you arrive on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.

Connect

As of June 2022, Bruges has 4G from Base / Telenet and Orange, and 5G from Proximus / Scarlet.

Go next

The most popular day trips from Bruges:

Damme is a small town near Bruges. A seasonal riverboat goes there on a cruise of 35 minutes each way. It's a very scenic trip, the landscapes are picturesque, and the village of Damme even more so. You can also go there by bike (special route). Local bus service to Damme is very limited and a trip from the Bruges railway station takes 24 minutes. Sluis is a charming small historic city just across the Netherlands border, where the Damse Vaart (Damme Canal) terminates. Very popular among Belgians to go shopping on Sundays, as the shops are all open there then. A direct bus (line 42) connects Bruges to Sluis, or you could go there by bicycle on the bike path along the Damse Vaart (17 km). Ypres (Ieper) is an important site of Great War battles, cemeteries, monuments and traditions such as the Last Post (every evening). Very popular among old veterans and young boys interested in wars. Sadly the public-transport connection between Ypres and Bruges isn't great, a train ride takes 1 hr 30 min, and a combination of train and bus still takes at least 1 hr. So trips to Ypres are only advisable when you have a car available. Ostend (Oostende) is the monumental beach resort, called queen of the coastal cities resort. King Leopold II (1865-1909) built before his attention turned to inner-city Brussels to build his new capital. The quintessential cosmopolitan 19th-century beach resort, full of endearing villas that have been classified as officia…