The beautiful city of Bruges invites you to spend some time on your own, to wander around the splendid medieval buildings, towers, churches and guild houses. Almost to become one with this city and its history. That’s one of the reasons why many people like to come back, after they’ve fallen in love with its beauty. Therefore, the whole program that day was on a voluntary basis and those of us that wished to joined the program did, others preferred to spend some time on their own, that was all just fine.

At 10.30 AM, a walk, guided by Regnier, was planned through the hart of the town, with stops at various historic highlights. The tour ended at the Halve Maan Brouwerij where we were expected for a guided tour through the brewery and the brewery museum.

Since 2005, the brewery, that has recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, has started brewing a new beer, after important investments were made in the very old fermentation facilities. The brew house, dating from the 1950’s, is still modern compared to some we have seen!

Two beers are brewed: the “Brugse Zot blond” a 6% blond ale, that recently won a gold medal at the World Cup in Seattle and the “Brugse Zot dubbel” a brown of 7.5%, with a nice malty character.

After a delicious buffet lunch at the brewery, where we were able to taste both of their beers, most of us set off for the Beer Festival which was being organised for the first time ever in the halls of the Belfry of Bruges: 40 small Belgian breweries and over 100 beers to try. We saw a lot of happy faces there!!

In the evening, Regnier took us for a beer to the smallest pub in town, called De Kogge.
We had La Chouffe on draught there.

Afterwards we went for dinner in the very good Brasserie Cambrinus, just off the Grote Markt of Bruges.

After dinner, the bus brought us to the Holiday Inn Airport Hotel. This was the end of another memorable tour, blesses with very good weather, great people, great food  and fantastic Belgian beers.