£49+ Cheap flights to Bruges

Bruges climate

Belgium has mild summers and cold winters because of the icy Baltic winds. Bruges is no exception to this climate. Summer temperatures can reach the mid-20s and this is when Bruges is usually packed with visitors who wish to spend their time exploring one of the most perfectly preserved medieval cities in Europe.

Getting around Bruges

Bruges is the most popular Belgian destination for tourists, most of whom set out to sightsee on foot. It’s easy to walk around this city of winding waterways and cobblestone streets, or you can sit pretty on a horse-drawn carriage or canal boat and explore the city that way. There are also buses that traverse the city limits and trains to get you elsewhere in Europe.

Getting from the Airport to the City

The main airport for travellers taking flights to Bruges is Ostend Bruges International Airport (BRU), which is about 15 miles from the city centre.

What is good to know if travelling to Bruges?

• Bruges (along with Brussels) is famous for its chocolate. You can smell chocolate being made throughout the city year-round. The most famous chocolate from the area is the Bruges Swaentje – the Bruges swan. Try it at any chocolatier.
• If this isn’t enough to satisfy your cravings, head for the Choco-Story, a museum dedicated to chocolate, which has the mouth-watering mission, “to make known the story of the transformation of cocoa into chocolate and to promote the health and quality aspects of Belgian chocolate”.
• Bruges is small and you can walk across the city centre in half an hour. Sign up for a walking tour if you want to make sure you don’t miss the best bits. A range of different walks can be booked at the tourist office, from the traditional, which takes in all the monuments, to the more unusual, entitled “fiction and fantasy” or “the sleeping city”.
• The Grote Markt, or city square, is one of the first destinations for most visitors to the city. Pedestrianised in 1996, the attractive and colourful square is home to an excellent food market on Wednesday mornings, open from 8am-1pm. Join the locals buying their weekly food.
• Bruges’s canals are the reason it is christened (along with many other cities) the “Venice of the North”. For a different view of the city, take a boat trip along the canal. Open throughout the summer (most canal boat trips are closes from November to March), you can book at the tourist office, or just arrive at one of the landing stages. The trips are understandably popular with tourists, so arrive first thing in the morning if you want to beat the long queues.
• The Groeninge Museum has paintings by well-known artists such as Hieronymus Bosch, Hans Memling, and Jan van Eyck, all of whom lived in Bruges.
• Visit the lace museum in Dijver 16 and 17 housed in some of the town’s many almshouses (godhuizen). You get a good sense of what a rich sponsor provided for the poor and elderly, who in return, prayed for his soul and usually made lace.

Bruges airport overview

A busy European airport, Brussels International Airport (BRU) is well-situated for further flights around Europe and Asia, but handles traffic from all over the world. Brussels Airlines is based here, and flies directly to more than 40 cities around Europe. Most recently, Thai Airways International and Brussels Airport have established a direct route between Bangkok and Brussels.

Located 11km (7 miles) northeast of Brussels in Zaventem, the airport was awarded Best Airport in Europe by the Airports Council International in 2005. Although that was a few years ago, the level of service hasn’t changed, and the airy and spotlessly clean airport is a genuine pleasure to use. You should, however, keep your belongings close at hand, as pickpockets are becoming more common, especially in the public areas before security. Also note that staff shortages have seen the average luggage collection wait-time increase to over 30 minutes.