Boundless Horizons

Day 2 – Zeebrugge, Belgium

Ashore 09:15 / All Aboard 22:00

Theme: Pirate Night
Drink of the day (alcoholic): Sunken Treasure (Malibu Coconut Rum, Midori, Orange Juice, Pineapple Juice, Blue Curacao, Sprite)
Drink of the day (non-alcoholic): Parrot Song (Coconut Cream, Pineapple Juice, Banana)
Evening entertainment: The Golden Mickeys: A Timeless Tribute

On Saturday morning, we docked in the port of Zeebrugge around 8:30am, and the cruise director announced people could go ashore from around 9:15am – 15 minutes later than scheduled, but with such a long day in port it didn’t make a difference.

We hadn’t booked a port adventure and planned to just head into Bruges to explore on our own. After a bit of a lie in, we went to Enchanted Garden for breakfast. I had my usual Eggs Benedict, and Rhys had French Toast. The main dining room breakfast is a nice way to start the day, the last time we were on the Dream it was served in Royal Palace. At dinner last night our servers explained that they were doing a split breakfast service on this sailing – Royal Palace was serving breakfast 7:30-9:30am, Enchanted Garden 9:00-10:30am. Cabanas was also open from 7:00-11:00am for a buffet breakfast.

Before our sailing, I’d joined the Facebook group for the cruise, and the admin had set up a Whatsapp group for us to communicate while on board. During the cruise, Facebook needs paid wifi to work, whereas Whatsapp will work on the free wifi. Checking messages over breakfast, I spotted that someone had said churro waffles were available in Cabanas! They’re usually only available on one day, so we headed up to get some, stopping on the way to admire the towel animals set up by the cast members. We got to Cabanas at 10:30, and it was super busy. There were no churro waffles! In fact, every time a new batch of regular Mickey waffles were put out, they were snapped up by people waiting. We managed to get a couple of regular Mickey waffles, which were great.

After second breakfast, we headed back to the stateroom to get ready, and then left the ship. On the Morning Show, the Cruise Director had confirmed that there were complimentary shuttles to the port entrance, or to Blankenberge which would drop off beside the train station. Before the cruise, we’d bought train tickets online so we could go straight to the platform. Weekend return tickets were only €5,20 each, compared to $59 each for the Full-Day Bruges On Your Own Port Adventure through DCL (or $49 each for the Half-Day version). The train only takes 11 minutes and from researching the trip it would be about 20 minutes in a taxi if there was a problem with the trains so we didn’t feel like we needed the safety net of a DCL excursion. We took the 12:54pm train into Bruges, and arrived 1:05pm.

We didn’t have a set plan, other than a rough route that we were going to stroll along from the train station to the dock for the boat tour. The Old Chocolate House is about a 15 minute walk from the station and was recommended by someone in the cruise Whatsapp group. It was already on the route we were planning to take so we headed in that direction, taking in the sights along the way. We grabbed a table outside and both ordered hot chocolate from the Summer Specials. I had a Winnie the Pooh (dark chocolate and honeycomb), Rhys had the Speculoos Bomb (milk chocolate with Biscoff/Speculoos). The hot chocolate is served as a large cup of hot milk, a little dish with your chosen ingredients, and a whisk. You pop your chocolate into the cup, give it a stir, and enjoy! This was absolutely delicious and I definitely recommend going if you’re in Bruges. There were also horse-drawn carts which passed along the street every so often as we enjoyed our drinks which added to the ambience. We bought some chocolate at the shop, then headed on to see more of the city.

Boat tours in Bruges are set by the local authority, so while five companies operate them, they follow the same 30 minute route and all cost €15 per adult. We strolled along to the Rozenhoedkaai embarkation point, and bought tickets at the booth. It was about a 20 minute wait, but the boats depart fairly often and each holds up to 40 people. All of the boat companies take the same route along the Dijver canal between Jan van Eyck Square and the Beguinage, taking in various sights such as the Groenerei, the Church of Our Lady with the tallest tower in the city, and the Boniface Bridge. We love seeing new places by boat and with only one afternoon to see the city, this was a great option.

After the boat tour we headed for Sint-Salvatorskathedraal (Saint Salvator’s cathedral). The building is gorgeous, with the oldest parts dating back to the 11th century.

With the trains back to Blankenberge running once per hour, we had enough time to stop at New Laurent beside the Cathedral for a beer before walking back to the station. We took the 5:54pm train, arriving at Blankenberge at 6:05pm. The shuttle back to the port was waiting for us beside Sint-Antonius Kerk on Scarphoutstraat, with a flag and a cast member to help guests find their way to the bus.

The return shuttle takes guests back to the port entrance at ABC tower to go through security, we took the lift up to the restaurant to grab some photos of the ship. Once through security, there is a shuttle bus to take you back to the ship.

We were back on the ship shortly after 6:30pm, too late for the early showing of The Golden Mickeys. We were tired and hungry so we headed straight to our stateroom and decided to order room service for dinner. Last night we’d let our servers know that we didn’t expect to make it to our main dining room dinner (in Enchanted Garden) since we had a late all aboard time, so they knew not to expect us. We ordered some chicken tenders, tomato soup (I love the room service soups – simple but tasty), spinach and feta pide (never had this before, loved it, would definitely order again), and a couple of Mickey bars. We took our food out onto the verandah to enjoy the view – though an enormous seagull swooped in and landed on the divider between us and the next verandah! I threw a napkin over the food and it lost interest.

Inside Out 2 was playing at 8:15pm and we hadn’t seen it yet. As with the shops yesterday, it was nice and quiet since most other people were seeing the stage show or eating dinner. This was the first time we’d been in the Buena Vista Theatre which is much smaller than the Walt Disney Theatre. There’s an entrance on deck 5 which was just along from our stateroom, which was good as we arrived right as the film was starting! There’s no trailers or adverts for films on the ship, the start time in the app is the start time for the movie. We really enjoyed the movie, I wasn’t sure if it would live up to the hype but it was a lot of fun – and typical Pixar, just a bit emotional!

Tonight was Pirate Night, but while we dressed for the occasion, we were too tired to go up and see the show. The Sailing Away party had been a bit chaotic, and we’d seen the deck party last year. Plus due to local restrictions, there were no fireworks on our sailing. On last year’s Mediterranean cruise we had Mickey’s Pirates in the Caribbean between dinner seatings (around 7:30pm), then later on we had the Buccaneer Blast (around 10pm) which is the fireworks show. This year we just had Mickey’s Pirates in the Caribbean at 10pm (plus character meets, activities, makeovers, etc). We went back to the stateroom after Inside Out 2 to grab a glass of wine. We were able to hear the deck show from our verandah, and 10pm was also all aboard time so we also got to watch our departure from Zeebrugge at the same time.

Another difference on this Pirate Night compared to last year was in the food served. Last year we had the Pirate Night menu since we were on a longer cruise. Since this sailing was 3 nights, the three main dining rooms just served their regular menu so that all guests get the same dining experience regardless of rotation. Something to be aware of if you’re booking a 3 night sailing. Though we still had pirate bandanas left in our stateroom and Davy Jones waiting for us when we got back at night!

Deadpool & Wolverine was on at 11:15pm in the larger Walt Disney Theatre, and this was the only showing on our sailing. There was some debate before the film was released on whether we would have it on board due to the R-rating, but we’d heard from other cruises that it was indeed showing. The app showed it as ages 17+ and they had cast members stationed at the doors to check Key to the World cards for those who looked like they might meet the minimum age. I expected it to be packed since this was the only chance to see the movie on board, but I was surprised to find that while it was busy, we were able to get some good seats without too many people around us. We absolutely loved this movie, it was a really fitting third instalment in the Deadpool series.

We got back to our stateroom around 1:30am, fortunately the next day was a day at sea and we didn’t need to be up early! As we were going back to British Summer Time, the Cruise Director reminded us to put our clocks back one hour – again, manually changing the time as our phones wouldn’t connect to a network to automatically detect the time. Top tip: the DCL app will show you the current Ship Time while on board, in case you need to check!