Wroclaw

Undeterred by Skene's dissatisfaction with Warsaw, I decided to extend my work trip to Wroclaw by a day to do some exploring. It probably helped that whilst Skene had to endure the spring thaw, I enjoyed an early summer as I visited Wroclaw's many churches.

I think I must have notched up nearly a dozen churches in my one day of sightseeing: some Roman Catholic and others Russian or Ukrainian Orthodox. One even featured a side chapel full of clockwork toys.

Given the heat (26 degrees!), I only managed one church tower though before I had to collapse in an ice cream parlour in the town square (which was oddly Bruges-like). Fortunately, a boat trip along the River Odra (the banks of which were lined by sunbathing locals) and a meander around the Botanical Gardens offered some respite from the heat and the overwhelmingly elaborate religious edifices.

On the food front, the pirogi (stodgy ravioli) were pretty interesting but needed washing down with a good measure of bison grass vodka and apple juice.

Click here for a sample of my many photographs of Wroclaw.

Bruges

Bruges was our destination of choice for the Easter weekend. We spent a leisurely day travelling there by road and ferry, stopping for lunch in Calais and arriving late afternoon.

We had a slightly difficult start, discovering that our hotel booking had been overlooked and then being rebuffed by a waiter for attempting to speak French to him (it may be the second official language in Belgium but they'd rather speak English). We soon settled in though and found ourselves enjoying a jenever in the oldest pub in the city, the unpronounceable Cafe Vlissinghe.

Having decided that spring was in the air, we headed off on our bikes towards Zeebrugge. The canalside route took us past a series of windmills on Bruges' outer ramparts and then beyond the city limits to Damme, a charming old market town which was the setting for the film of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Tempted though we were to join the locals on the cafe terrace, we pressed on down the Leopold Canal towards the North Sea reaching Zeebrugge in time for lunch.

The next day we joined the rest of the tourists to see the quaint city sights before spending Sunday meandering back down the coast via Ostend and Dunkerque towards the ferry.

View photos online here.