Weird And Wonderful Bruges: A fine day in France and Belgium.

We walked to a train station yesterday morning in order to follow up on Alex’ advice to go to Bruges. I struggled to get our bus tickets loaded on to my phone before the bus left, even though I gave myself 30 minutes. More evidence of my tech deficiency. The ride was green and pretty, like all of Europe we have seen. This is a little oxymoronic. The people here claim to be in need of rain after several weeks of totally dry weather. I guess they need a dose of my home Spokane to see what dry is.

When we got off the bus we started walking, but the first people I saw I asked for direction. It turned out I was headed the incorrect direction. The man physically pulled me out of a bike path and told us to follow them and stay out of the bike path. they were headed to the old Bruges center. Follow we did. I am going to post a lot of pictures because words are likely insufficient, though I try. I will start with the plaza of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The section of Bruges we were there to see is small, so we were told. We had gotten a map that was a maze of streets that is about as far from being a grid as possible. It is certainly big enough to spend hours meandering. Belgium is known for chocolate and Bruges is known for architecture. We went to a fancy cafe for a cocoa and a coffee. They both were tiny and expensive. The coffee was wonderfully intense and the hot chocolate was interesting for its presentation. It came in a small glass mug of cream with a slab of cocoa on a stick. It reminded me of a See’s sucker (for those of you who can remember those). The sucker goes in the hot cream and eventually dissolves. Not bad. We also went into several of the dozens of Chocolatiers shops looking for dairy free, sugar free chocolate. We did find two shops that fulfilled that criteria and we bought from them. Not sure what all the commotion is about Belgian chocolate, although one of the chocolates we bought was quite good, just not better than the best we found in other places.

Also, Bruges is called the Venice of Belgium due to its canals which are an avenue for tourist boats.

The streets themselves are an avenue for tourist horse and carriage rides. If you go, get out of the way when you hear the clip clop of hooves behind you. They do not tend to slow down. Add to that, the narrow streets also allow automobiles and there are a lot of impatient bikers winding between the masses of people. I am hoping the photos do some justice to how crowded the streets can be, but i doubt it as my objective was not to show the masses. There were many people who seemingly believed they have the right of way no matter what. We had to be quite fluid and nevertheless got run into now and then. In a word the sidewalks are wild, but exhilarating.

none of the pictures above portrays well the hordes we periodically encountered.

The background to all of this is an immense number of tourist trap shops and restaurants, but also old brick/stone buildings and castles; many of which were magnificent in their artistry and construction. Almost immediately on entering I felt as though I was in the original Disneyland, a vision created by the commercialism, masses, but also the fairy tale like structures.

On the way home we were adventurous and rode the rails as an alternative to our bus ride into Belgium. It went well and we went to the butcher for a rotisserie chicken, and vegetables. The butcher shop was the most fun I have ever had in a butcher shop. I barely speak French, the butcher barely speaks English and we both speak a bit of Spanish. While we were there a man came in who speaks English and French. We had a round table of language skills, so much so we were even able to joke with each other. The chicken is excellent.

Oh, we also bought a bottle of wine. We have now bought 4 bottles at the steep rate of 4.5 -7.5 euros, 22.50 euros total. That would be great if the dollar wasn’t sucking air right now. All very good, all Rhone reds; and the short one, the cheapest is excellent.