Bruges earned its nickname 'the Venice of the North' honestly, and there's no better way to understand why than slipping below street level onto one of its medieval canal boats. The network of waterways threading through the city centre dates back to the 12th and 13th centuries, when Bruges was one of the wealthiest trading hubs in all of Europe — a place where Flemish cloth merchants, Italian bankers, and Hanseatic traders all jostled for position along these very banks. From the water, the city reveals an entirely different geometry: stepped gable rooftops looming overhead, willow branches trailing into dark water, and stone bridges so low that passengers have to duck beneath them. It reframes a city you thought you knew from the cobblestones above.
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