(AFP) – Summertime tourist has reached capacity in Belgium’s cobblestone-and-canal city of Bruges.
“It’s really reached a red line now,” says Arnout Goegebuer, 55, as he sits inside a cafe, staring out a window across a crowded outside terrace.
“We don’t need more tourists anymore; we have enough – maybe a little less,” he argues.
It’s a sentiment shared by other residents of the western city of 119,000 people, which attracts eight million visitors each year, the most of whom come for day trips during the summer.