It was just another rubbish-collection day in Edinburgh where the pigeons and seagulls have terrific fun overnight tearing rubbish bags open and making a bloody great mess.

We flew out of Edinburgh at around 7am, and a little over an hour later we were somewhere over Belgium (and it was looking nice and flat - just how we cyclists like it ;)

Belgium: The land of chocolate...

Copious amounts of the best beer on the planet...

Waffles...

Good chow...

And more chocolate! That chicken has a rather surprised look on his face hehe.

From the airport it was straight on a train to Bruges, and this was the sight outside Bruges' train station: a million bicycles, some big impressive spire off in the distance, and buses with cars on the roof (which I never did find out the reason for).

I had heard the same thing about Bruges from everybody I'd asked before coming and that is it's bloody beautiful, and they were spot on! The bulk of the city is contained within an oval ring-road of around 4kms north-to-south and 2kms east-to-west, so it's very compact and easily explored. It reminded me a lot of Venice with its narrow and winding streets, crammed buildings, waterways, and a shitload of tourists, except Bruges has cars.

Everybody cycles in this place, everybody! The bikes on the road almost outnumber the cars.

And the ladies just love those cobbled streets ;)

Horse and cart seemed to be pretty popular with the tourists. Why not just cycle? :)

As with most of Europe there was plenty of impressive architecture around the place. This is City Hall, with some BMW M1 display going on out front.

Several canals snake their way through the city, again much like Venice.

There are a number of windmills spread along the river in the northeast of the city, probably not surprising given the Dutch influence.

Fooding and clubbing hehe, the perfect night out.