We left Downham Market about 0845 bound for Brugge. If we hadn’t analysed it, we would have returned our Hertz car to Heathrow, then take the tube to St Pancras to connect with the Eurostar to Brussels where we would change for Brugge.
Instead, we returned the car to Cambridge at no surcharge, and took the train from there to St Pancras, saving about 2 hours. The only slight hitch was that the Hertz office had moved from Cambridge station to a short walk away. But as we had luggage, the Hertz staff kindly drove us to the station after our dropoff.
We were on the train at Cambridge at 1030 getting us to St Pancras at 1130. We had about an hour to spare at Burger King using their wifi before checking in for the 1404 Eurostar.
After X-ray and immigration for entry into Europe (done by the French), we boarded the train for Brussels. The Eurostar took about 35 minutes to reach the tunnel and was underwater or underground for about 15 minutes.
The entire journey to Brussels took 2 hours. The train was very ordinary like any long distance train.
The transfer to Brugge was swift, taking only about 15 minutes. We hopped on a multi-stop service which took about 1h10 to get there.
We took a taxi to our hotel, the Van Eyck. We wandered around the beautiful old town for a while and had dinner in a cafe on a pedestrian mall. It was somewhat light till 2230.
First observations (rather than complaints) was that there’s a whiff of Jakarta (bad sewage smell) every now and then around Brugge (and actually some other cities I visited later subsequently. Perhaps it is the extreme summer heat; it isn’t the canals per se. Also, the tap water here doesn’t taste good, much like that in London and Downham.