Waffles, beer, chocolate—what comes to mind when you think of Belgium? If you’re one of the 6,000+ geocachers who have visited the busy city center in Bruges, you may remember the country for a different, highly Favorited reason: this Geocache of the Week!
Bruges is a canal-based city, in the same boat as Amsterdam and Venice. Its atmosphere and position as the capital of Flanders attracts visitors from all over the world. The Traditional cache in Markt (market square) is one of a series of 308 caches designed to bring geocachers to every province of Flanders, each offering a clue to the series final, ‘bonus’ cache. However, the geocache in Bruges, RV 5.08 : Brugge, far exceeds the Favorite points of any other cache in this series.
The cache enjoys a prime location inside the bustling commercial square. There are a few tricks to this Traditional, however. The first is that it is hidden in plain sight; the four million muggles that visit the area per year have likely sat on it, kicked its tires, or even tested out the pedals. That’s right, this regular-sized geocache is hidden on a bicycle (painted in classic Geocaching colors, of course)! Because this is a common mode of transportation within the city, this host vehicle blends right into the surrounding area.
Just because you’ve found ground zero doesn’t mean your job is complete—this geocache is a field puzzle. On the bicycle, there are two panniers labeled A and B. Pannier A, whose lock combination is gifted with open hands in the cache hint, holds instructions to visit specific locations within the market square, admiring the medieval architecture along the way. Only by doing this can the clues necessary to open pannier B be found, which holds the logbook.
Cache owner, cricri010, thoughtfully brings attention to some very important and picturesque places within the square: the bustling market vendors and chocolatiers, the sparkle of the gilded edifice of the Provinciaal Hof (Provincial Palace), and the dominating steeple of the belfry. It makes the experience of this geocache the dominating memory of everyone’s trip to the area.
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