Friday, May 9th – Brugge

Arriving a couple of hours late into Zeebrugge we waited for the boat to clear and headed out on the shuttle to the front gate at the Port of Zeebrugge to find our Taxi George – the company that we engaged to take us the 35 minutes to Brugge.

After a little searching we found Carlos with the sign marked "Tom" in the front window. Tom had predetermined every street in centre of town for us to follow on our walking tour of city centre. It's a quaint city, lots of greenery and parks – kinda like walking into the past but with modern shops. They’ve preserved the architecture and chosen rather than to “tear down” – renovate which I suppose is common in Europe to keep that old world flavour.

Around lunch Tom wanted to stop at a 500-year old tavern for a biere and local fare, so we turned left, then right and right again and sure enough. There was Tom’s tavern. Its here where I got to meet Freddy. Freddy was a Jack Russell mix that apparently was the owner’s dog but had free run under all the tables. It was weird to the point where my food just arrived; he was under the table and up against my leg looking for handouts. The stare was just too much – but I wasn’t sure whether he was a soup dog or a pasta dog.

One of the things that I most wanted to see was the Madonna and Child that was carved in Carrara marble by Michelangelo Buonarotti in 1504 that was housed in Our Lady’s Church. Originally it was intended for an altar in Sienna but it was stolen by the German’s during the war and recovered in a mine in Germany. Having recovered this masterpiece it is one only a few of Michelangelo’s works that are outside of Italy.

We got back to the ship about an hour before they pulled the gangway and set out despite the very, very strong winds that we faced pulling out of the port. The captain just came on and said that the Pilot Boat would not be getting back their pilot back tonight – the winds (70 mph) and huge waves created an unsafe transfer, so the guide boat returned without the pilot who subsequently accepted a two-day cruise to Copenhagen complete with return airfare. Lucky guy.

Formal tonight again – not so sure what the theme will be. Tomorrow is a sea-day so it’ll be a couple of days before I can post my blog updates but we’re scheduled to arrive for the first time into Copenhagen on Sunday. This will be Part II of the D-Day/Baltic cruise – some people get off and we’ll get a new a bunch of cruisers for the second 12-day leg through Scandinavia. After 10-days on the Eurodam I pretty much on first name basis with everyone in the Casino and bars on the ship. This daily routine will be tough to breakaway from when this is over on the 24th of May.