All the Damme Cycling

On our second day in Bruges, we rented a couple of bicycles and explored the countryside. 10/10 side quest, definitely recommend.

From Bruges, there are dedicated bike lanes that take you along the rivers to neighboring towns. I’ve never cycled somewhere with such flat roads and excellent cycling infrastructure and it was such a treat.

We first set out for Damme, a small town that’s about a 20 minute ride from Bruges.

We weren’t ready for a break yet when we reached Damme. So, after a quick photo op at their cute windmill, we decided to press on to Sluis, which is actually across the Netherlands border. It felt surreal to enter a country the way you would enter a province or state. I’d share a photo, but there wasn’t even any signage depicting the border.

Unlike other places we’ve visited on this trip, Sluis was decidedly not a tourist town. It was just a nice, midsized town where Dutch and Belgian folks were doing their weekend shopping. Signage was not in English for our benefit. Shops had real stuff in them, not tourist trinkets. One of the shopkeepers even asked us (in the kindest way possible) what two North Americans were doing in Sluis. Sluis was great.

After wandering around a bit, I enjoyed a “sandwich” that was almost entirely cheese.

On the way back, we did stop into Damme, mostly to give our aching legs and butts a break. Well, mine anyway. James is a biking machine.

Damme was a quaint town, smaller than Sluis, with mostly a retiree crowd and a lot of art exhibits. They also had a number of rather bizarre sculptures dotted around the town, which felt oddly juxtaposed with the medieval buildings.

We even encountered a string quartet playing in a park, not far from this sculpture of some books inside a tree.

I bought this hat and sweater in Sluis!

After Damme, it was a slow and rather painful ride back to Bruges (for me). I may have overestimated my stamina when I planned a 30km day on a rented bike. But, I still feel like this was an incredibly worthwhile adventure. Travelling independently to little towns is my favorite way to soak in a culture.

We finished off the day with a well-deserved Belgian brew.