August 15 –
We bid goodbye to Brussels and headed out of the city center – not according to my directions, of course, no matter how hard we tried – and headed to the Atomium just north of the city. Built for the 1958 World’s Fair it’s a huge atom-shaped thing that’s 102 meters high and is served by the second fastest lift in Europe moving at 5 meters per second. The view was spectacular and there was lots of things to look at inside the building. It was extremely cool and gets a big thumbs up from the family!
We then hit the road for the short trip to Brugge. We’re in West Flanders now – no French here! We’re practicing our Dutch since we’ve got 3 days in Amsterdam after this (Alstublieft is please!) We found the hotel with little problem relative to Brussels. We unloaded the bags, parked the car and were off to see the town. I have to say that this place is so picturesque it’s nearly nauseating! And the tourists! The number of people in the town was unbelievable – and they were all tourists! I heard more English spoken on the streets today than at any time since Frankfurt.
The market square is actually more impressive, IMHO, than the Grand Place and there are cobbled streets upon cobbled streets where ever you turn. We got some lunch at a cafe and I was again impressed by the seriousness with which the Belgians take their beer: although our meals were served on paper plates, we got the proper beer glasses to go with the type of beer we ordered. Every single beer has it’s own particular glass and it may be okay to serve your brochette and frites on styrofoam but not for your beer!
We wandered about before deciding on a boat tour of the canal. The driver pointed out that Brugge only has about 1000 years of recorded history and there is actually a hospital from the 13th century that has the wards in tact! The thousand year old buildings weren’t enough for us though. We needed to go the Archeology museum to get to the *really* old stuff – and what a well done museum this is! The entire thing is hands on – although the docent at the ticket booth did warn against touching the lights! – so Gillian was in her element. The exhibits showed all sorts of things found around Brugge dating from different periods and compared them to modern equivalents. One of the most striking things for me was the banquet table set with eating arrangements from the 14th through 21st centuries – very well done!
There’s a church on every corner – including a few Basilicas – and we almost made it through the entire day without stopping in one but there was one that we couldn’t resist: Our Lady of the Healing Blood. Yup, There is a church in Brugge that is famous for having drops of blood from Christ as it poured from his wound. The reliquary for St. Sebastian’s hand has nothing on this! There is a HUGE tabernacle behind which the blood is kept. And of course, you can light a candle there (count: 12). The most amazing thing about this particular religious house is that the decorations were unbelievable! The reformed Swiss should be turning in their graves! There wasn’t one square inch of wall, ceiling or floor space that wasn’t covered with murals, bright paint or other religious decoration. Not a place where you want to attend mass hung over! Not that anyone actually does that…. 😉
It was threatening rain on and off and we had to drop in on the only brew pub in town to keep dry… 😉 but when the rain was off we wandered to visit the city gates – which was very cool – and wandered along the canal where there were a few windmills (very Dutch!). Even though today is a national holiday (Assumption), there were a fair number of shops open and we wandered around them sampling some excellent Belgian chocolates – they might be better than the Swiss!
After a while, we started to look for dining options. Unfortunately, since so many of the restaurants cater to the masses of tourists, just about every place had the same basic menu of traditional Flemish dishes all served with frites. We were pretty much Belgian cuisined out so we cemented our visit by sampling Belgian Chinese food – which was very good! Better than what we had in Switzerland that’s for sure. And even the Chinese restaurant serves good beer in the right glasses. I think I like this place!
/san/
[Pedometer: 19, 083 or about 9.5 miles over really old cobblestones.]
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