Brugge and the North Sea Coast Places
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Brugge
Brugge has tangled streets, narrow canals, handsome squares, and old gabled buildings that were such a powerful magnet more than a century ago. Its limits now incorporate the port of Zeebrugge, and it is the administrative center of West Flanders. Although strong in politics, its principal industry remains tourism. Brugge has not only awakened from its centuries-old sleep, but it is also bright-eyed with spruced-up shops and services. The current throngs of admiring day-trippers have definitively overthrown the "despotic" silence that Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach wrote about it his 1892 novel Bruges-la-Morte (Brugge, the Dead).
Although it is often called Bruges, its French name, the city's official name is indeed Brugge (bruhg-guh), and you'll score points with the locals by using the Flemish title.
