The missus and I will be in Brussels in mid-March and hope to take a day trip to Brugge. Thoughts about leaving at noonish and returning after dinner about eightish?

I am no help to you here, because I've yet to visit Brussels or Brugge. However, I am tickled with the "noonish" and "eightish" references. Tongue-in-cheek perhaps? Delighted, I raced to Merriam-Webster online, to see if either word had reached a level of respectability yet. Crestfallen...no such luck.

Let's see....Sausalito.... displaced dot.com worker perhaps? Not to worry, something will turn up before they foreclose on your sailboat. If I hear of anything, I'll have my people call your people.

You should be fine since the trains between Brussels and Bruges only take 50 minutes.

Dotcom nothing. Sausalito's native dialect is clearly Brit-ish.

It is always comforting to know that there are still some British subjects who speak "clearly" isn't it?

Thank you for your responses. Not a dot.com refugee just someone who has moved across the GG bridge from the land of "Fet-ish". All of that being said, we are late risers and hate having to do much more than having long hot showers and eating breakfast(with a latte)in the morning. Now one may say that this is slothful and decadent, and one may think that this contributes to the deterioration of the planet but personally ... I just like to sleep late.

If you ask the Bruges Tourist Office, [email protected] , to post you a map of the city centre you will see that you can cross the station square, start through the park, pass the Beguinage, and reach the great square by walking through quiet medieval streets.

[email protected]

Are you planning to finish dinner or about eightish or dine then? Many restaurants don't start serving dinner until 6:30 pm (at the earliest), so if you want to be back on the train by eight or so (the trains to Brussels leave right about the hour and the half hour and give yourself about 15 minutes at least to walk back to the station), you'd have to eat at one of the casual, more tourist-oriented spots that serve non-stop. However, if you mean you'd like to dine at 8, and you spend about 90 minutes for dinner, you could easily catch a train to Brussels about 10 pm and still be back in plenty of time to take mass transit back to your hotel (the metro stops a little after midnight). Overall, I suggest you plan on catching a train back at 9 or 9:30, rather than 8 pm.
What's your taste in food? Brugge has a few gourmet restaurants, some nice bistros, tons of tourist-oriented casual spots, and also plenty of grilled meat places. A lot of Flemings are *really* into grilling--our Flemish friends are always finding excuses to fire up that barbecue. There is a restaurant in Brugge that has good, moderately priced grilled steak, pork, ribs, etc., and absolutely TERRIFIC home-made sangria. Off the tourist path, but easy to reach from the main square. We ate there last month and had a great time, but I've forgotten the name (Sangria-induced haze). I'll be in Brugge again next week, will track down the name and address if you're interested.
BTilke (Brussels)

Of course you can make your trip to Brugge as BTilke points out. The last time I was in Belgium, it was to accompany my husband on business. He had to work all day, so we didn't leave for Brugge until past five. All the tourist busses had long since departed, and it seemed like we had beautiful Brugge all to ourselves! It was a late evening back to Brussels.

To anyone who can suggest a specific restaurant (casual) in Brugge for grilled meat we'd appreciate it. I'm also looking forward to Btilke's recomendation

Sausalito, I admire your style. In fact I sort of envy it. I'm always too anxious to do things when traveling to stay in bed late and do a leisure latte and breakfast. But hey, travel can be relaxing, and I think you've found a way to do it. And it sure beats doing those tours where you have to meet the bus at 6:30 AM!

About your question? Sure. Why not?