Saturday in Bruges

Today we headed to Bruges via train from Brussels Midi – hopped a cab wherein the driver asked if 10 Euro would be ok rather than the meter…as the meter would be cheaper. Hello?!? And no, it wasn’t far to the station, obviously, but Claire has done an awful lot of walking and no doubt Bruges would be a lot of footwork.
The driver’s excuse for wanting 10 euros from us for a 6 euro ride was because he had to sit at the hotel for an hour waiting for a customer. And we were supposed to compensate for this?

The ride to Bruges was quick, kids enjoyed the train and the deep green farmland, small villages with lovely churches and steeples, brick houses with triangular roofs, a few horses and cows sprinkled in, made for a lovely view.

We were in Bruges by 11, headed for the city center and hit the canal ride first. A nice way to tour the city from the water, our guide gave a spiel in 6 different languages (diverse group of tourists, obviously).

Bruges’ many gorgeous buildings dating back to the 11th century are mainly intact as the city was untouched during both world wars. Thus it’s a lovely place…gorgeous architecture, winding streets, canals, flowers in bloom.

Five km of canals around the city are devoted to tourism. The area used to be at sea level and you can still take canals out to sea (the outer ones, not the ones we sailed). The boat took us under bridges built in the 13th and 15th centuries. We saw many of the city’s key sites – old hospital (now museum), a house that looks like a church, cathedral, many other churches (I think there are 16 or more, and only one of them isn’t Catholic).

Today Bruges has a large Italian population, per our boat driver. People here speak Flemish as it’s in one of Belgium’s Flemish states (I think he said 4 are Flemish speaking, 4 French).

After the boat ride we looked for the Godiva factory but apparently it’s left Bruges so we took refuge at a pub near the fish market for lunch. We sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine, beer and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. This was after attempting to eat at an Italian restaurant that looked like it had great pizza (apparently I hadn’t gotten my fill from the previous night).

When we came in (kids and me), the waitress looked at us and said “no.” Not sure if that meant no room, no kids or no stroller -- or all the above -- but we made haste to depart.

Joe waved at the patrons in the window on the way by later.

From lunch we headed to the chocolate museum – a more upscale version than the one in Brussels. We got samples on the way in and wandered through 3 floors of chocolate info – history, marketing, manufacturing, etc. The last stop was the kitchen, where a chef was giving a demo and distributing REALLY good chocolate.
We then wandered the neighborhood around the chocolate museum and found a lovely church, Baroque style.

After a stroll along the canals we jumped into a long line for a horse carriage ride per Claire’s request. Thankfuly it was in the town square area, which makes for great people watching. Plenty of sidewalk cafes, some carnival rides, snack stands, etc.

Eventually Lynn and Bernard (Lynn being the carriage driver, Bernard the big black horse in front) picked us up, charged us an exhorbitant amount of money for a 45 minute ride around the city and off we went.

Claire sat next to Lynn on the buckboard for the first half of the ride, Ava for the second. Bernard rootie toot tooted on Ava’s watch -- Ava rolled her eyes at Lynn, much to the latter's amusement. Kids got to see Bernard get a snack and water break half way through the ride. No doubt the horses have a good gig going in Belgium, in contrast to those poor over used animals in India -- here they work every other day, have food/water breaks in the midst of each ride and only give 8 rides per day. (I actually believe it; the lobby for animal care is probably just as vocal as it is for human health care in Belgium).

After a fun jaunt around town, Lynn gave us a recommendation for dinner – traditional Flemish food at a nearby restaurant. Lovely, warm little place with Flemish tapestries on the walls.

Joe and I got the fillet for two, the kids shared a fried fish and we all dove into the fries – very good meal with a lovely bottle of red wine to accompany it. For dessert Claire opted for lemon sorbet, A for 3 kinds of ice cream (she’s into coffee flavored ice cream these days – I need someone to be a fellow coffee connoisseur in the future), I had a decadent chocolate mousse and Joe had some ice cream concoction.

As we made our way to the train station we stopped in the cathedral – the largest building in town, which also boasts the lengthiest history of any in Bruges. (Holy Savior Cathedral was not originally built to be a cathedral; when it was founded in the 10th century it was a common parish church.) Over time it's grown and changed, becoming a cathedral in the 19th century.

The path to the station took us to another town square and fountain, lots of flowers and plenty of people out and about. We hit the station at 8:29, ran for the 8:31 train to Brussels and voila – arrived an hour later!