I wish I’d followed Alice’s lead.

Not down the rabbit hole, but trailed the lone hipster of Bruges through the cobbled streets.

If we’d followed him with his too tight, turned up jeans and frighteningly small feet shod in the trendiest of footwear – I think we’d have found out why three million people visit the city.

Rather than listening to the rumbling of our stomachs we might have stumbled into an underground club filled with – anything – chocolate, music, beer anything – even a rabbit would have brightened up a day of hope over experience.

But alas we went for frites – the famed potato offering that as well as beers has put Belgium on the map and I am now left with the overriding feeling that I missed something.

And that’s the trick with Bruges.

You keep wandering, yes enjoying the view, but always with the hope that something exciting or even just mildly more interesting than lovely brickwork will cross your path.

There must be more – we said – walking every street at least 17 times. Turning corners to discover that the shop, restaurant or church was the same one we’d walked past not 10 minutes earlier.

My travel buddy had suggested a visit because he too felt he’d missed something the last time he came to Bruges.

There had to be more. And he along with three million tourists come every year searching out the substance behind the beautiful facades.

There must be more to the city than winding streets, soaring towers and historic churches. Mustn’t there?

After a day where hope faded and we became ever more jaded by the chocolate box views, I can wholeheartedly confirm that there is NOTHING more to Brugge.

There’s nowhere to lounge in a sofa and watch the world go by. There’s nowhere that hasn’t been hipsterised to make way for hipsters that don’t seem to have turned up.

Except maybe there is?

We kept looking, walking, plodding on in the hopes of glimpsing the lone hipster. Looking into bars with joyless tourists who seemed to have given up the search for excitement in Bruges.

They’d probably given up after 48 hours – the maximum any guide book seems to recommend – with the majority of ‘must-dos’ involving more walking.

That should have warned us…but no still we went on hopeful that we’d find a reason to stop somewhere. And when we finally gave in, it was just to commiserate with two local old-timers who had clearly not been consulted on the transformation of a lovely old bar into a soulless joint.

These two, in their 70s, had obviously cradled their beers, ignoring as the hipsterisation went on around them and would not be put off their evening beer by anything as tasteless as the 90s rap soundtrack, a KEEP CALM and love theatre poster or the natty little disco ball thrown in for good measure.

And that’s Bruges – a clash of medieval and hipster that comes out just plain boring. It tricks you into thinking there must be more, that if you’d followed the hipster down the rabbit hole you might find untold adventures.

Maybe there is a Mad Tea Party going on underground, but that hipster can keep his beer and frites and secrets because I won’t be a Tweedledum – Bruges – I’m done.