Brugge

 We have been in Brugge three nights and three days. It has been fun, but except for yesterday it has rained and today it rained so much and so hard that I will be taking the hair dryer to my shoes to try to dry them for tomorrow. We take the train to Brussels tomorrow . It is not supposed to rain there tomorrow, but it is on Wednesday, our only full day there. I will admit that I am a bit tried of cloudy cold or rainy cold days. I don’t think we have seem the sun much since Nov 15th in Greece.

But we did get to walk around a lot and explored quite a bit in spite of the rain. The lights were on every evening and we had breaks in the rain to walk around and see them. The markets were interesting in that they were there, but I will admit being disappointed in the selection of products. Outside of the food and drink, most of the stuff was just imported from china. I did not see any textiles, lace, or stuff that was locally made. I did buy a couple of pairs of warm fuzzy sock, but they were definitely made in China. The tag said so.

Now we had a great time popping into the shops. That was where the locally made stuff was. Now to the pictures of Brugge and our time here.

Our hotel looked out on the city hall building

On Saturday and Sunday every so often a marching band came through the square, down to the main Christmas market a couple of blocks away. Around the Market perimeter and then back through the other gate of the city hall.

On the opposite side of the square from us was the Basilica of the Holy Blood. The church house a relic that is said to hold the blood of Christ that was collected by Joseph of Arimathea and brought from the Holy Lands by the Count of Flanders for his private church which he finished in 1157 AD. It has change little since then.

Walking one of the small covered walkway, I looked out and saw this display by the canal that flowed by the area

This is the outside walkways on one of the sides of the Belford, 

The Belford which is now a museum, at the end of the inner courtyard is the Belfry of Bruges. It is a medieval bell tower in the center of the city. The belfry formerly housed the treasury and was used to watch for fires and other dangers.

Much of the inner city of Brugge remains as it was when the town was constructed  in the medieval times. It was one of the few major cities that was not bombed in WWII. I am sure major renovations have been done inside some buildings and in all the residences, but the exteriors are original.

There are many archways and winding roads in this part of town. Traffic is light to nonexistent in most of it. Even the main shopping streets have minimal traffic.

We found a grocery store. Dale wanted to see if he could find some more bars

This is the area of the smaller of the two markets here. They are only a few blocks apart

This one has booths around a covered eating area. Most of the booth served food.

They had this little kids merry go round tucked in a corner

This is a picture of the Gruuthusemuseum, one of many museums here

These gates are all over as ways to pass from one area to another 

Just pictures as we walked around

This was from one of the bridges that cross one of the many canals in the inner city

This street was just styled a bit different than some of the others close by

Entrance to another museum, the Groeningemuseum.if you are wandering why I seem to be running words together, both here and in Austria this is how many words are written. I am copying them directly from the signs

One of the many church throughout the inner city

Brugge is know as the Venice of the north

This shop is a family owned and operated chocolate store. I frequented it three times in our time here.

Another shop directly across the street. In the shopping portion of the town, you could see three or four chocolate shops in a one block area

From our hotel room down to the square. The city hall is to the left of the huge tree,  the church of the Holy Blood behind the tree.

This shot shows the Belfry straight back a little to the right side. That is where the larger Market was 

Most of the street and sidewalk (when there are sidewalks) are cobblestones 

This restaurant “bearly” has any room in their outdoor seating. I guess to sit outside the fur coat helps in the winter

We found the Lego store

These are just some of the awesome build jobs in their small store

This is a model of the royal palace of Brugge 

And the Eiffel Tower model

To enter the inner city in a car, you need to cross the canal and go through the gates. Here are only eight ways (gates) to drive into the inner city

They have a walking budges also that crosses this main canal that circles the city

We took a walk down the park that runs along the large outer canal

It is like there is a large moat around the city. The water is moving at a good pace here too

We enjoyed the fall leaves on this brisk day

One of the few painting I have seen on building during our walks. I saw no tagging or graffiti in any of our walks. It frankly was nice.

This is a main plaza on the outskirts of the main inner old town. One a the few rays of sunshine seen lately was as the sun was going down under the clouds. It shone on these builds

There are still a lot of restaurants with outdoor seating and festive decorations 

Another look at the sun highlighting a couple of the tall towers

This picture happened in the 15 minutes of sun, then it started to rain fairly heavy. We got our rainbow before our storm. You can see the Belfry highlighted under the rainbow

We wandered in the rain looking for a gateway to the inner city again

Then we wandered our way back as dusk was lighting up the clouds

We kept aiming for the belfry

Sometimes we got detoured on our way

But we ended up in the wider areas. They have some homeless here, but not a huge number that I saw

We are being rained on a bit, Dale had his hood up as we approach the Hotel De Castillion. Not our hotel, but really decorated 

Not sure what the red lighting was for outside this bar, but it caught the eye

The windows at the chocolate shops were very impressive 

If I that thought I could get one of the bigger pieces home, I might have tried, bit since they are all hollow inside, I figured they would not make it. Besides we are trying to be reasonable about how much we buy. We still have two towns to go.

This weekend there were people all around. Tonight it is pretty deserted around our hotel, I guess being a rainy Monday has people staying inside.

So we decided to test this statement

We waited outside to get into their upstairs tea room

It was a small space with close together tables, but still fun. The stair I am pretty sure were original to the building. Very steep and narrow.

We were given very hot milk, a whisk, and chocolate pieces, with whip cream in a dish on this side

It was a bowl size, do it yourself, hot chocolate 

Dale got a waffle with his and I got a brownie

By the time we were done, it was dark.

We walked around looking for lights around first the smaller Market area

 And streets near by

Then just walking down the shopping area to see the shops and over the street lights

This was outside the larger Christmas Market

And surrounding the square the Christmas Market is in

This is the Historium

And a shop I enjoyed the decor of

Lights projected on buildings and trees, part of the winter glow walk we took the next night

With areas where the courtyards are lighted up

So many stores have such fun displays

I stopped several times to take pictures.

The city hall and the tree in front of it

Tree across from our hotel

Restaurant near by

Our hotel

The red bags are from a place called the Choc Story that we found the first time we were here several years ago. We have had their stuff shipped in the past few years, but I got a couple of bags to take home since we are here. Also the warm fuzzy socks I picked up at the Christmas market (they were made in China) to warm my feet in the hotel room. The other clearish bag has chocolate slabs with peanuts in it. It is from the place I have stopped at three times while we were here.

So they had this walking route set up around the city with several lighting displays at different points on it. Since last night (Sunday night) it was not raining, we decided to do it. 

It was about a mile and a half circular route, lite by blue lights to guide you along

This was a huge screen overhead in one spot with shapes of sea creatures going through it

The walk was called Winter Glow. This sphere was lite blue on the exterior and had other colors cycling inside

This stop had a path of lighted stepping stones, that changed colors as people walked on them

On some of the pathways where it lead us between backroads, they had put mirror balls under each blue light

Here they were projecting on the building to simulate the movement of water in the canals

This stop they had people put their bare hands on these panels

And the windows in the church across the road lite up to their heartbeat 

This was not part of the display, but saw it as we were walking the route and liked it

The blue lights lead us beside and over several of the smaller canals

They had some water spraying up and projected a story of the of the swans that inhabit the canals

Here it is projecting the blue lights to light up the church

Here the are projecting the colors of the winter glow (blues, purples, turquoise, and various shades in between) on the municipal theatre 

Finally walk through light tunnel that pulses and changes colors to some piano music they have piping out of loud speakers. This is right outside of our hotel room windows.

The Markets here were interesting if you came for the food, but really disappointing if you came looking locally made or handmade things. The stuff for sale felt like you were at a Walmart sale. Tons of sweat shirts, scarfs, stocking hats, socks, sweaters, and such. No lace, local made ornaments, no high quality clothing. They tried to tell us the polyester was better than cotton, bamboo, silk, wool, or alpaca. Most things even sweatshirts were under 5 or 10 euros and came from china. Made it easy to find some warm inexpensive fluffy socks, but everything we got here in Brugge came from the shops that were family owned and mostly produced their products themself or at least they were made in the area.

Even when we got a drink at the Christmas Markets here, they were in disposable cup which they charged you 2.5 euros for in addition to the cost of the drink. We loved getting the ceramic mugs at the Austria Christmas Markets. They cost 5 euros for the mug, then you could reuse it again to get drinks cheaper at any of the booths. We collected three different mugs in Austria and had planned to get one at each town we visited, but none were offered here. We were also disappointed when we went to one of the booths that said they offered backed potatoes. We ordered one and they filled a paper disposable food tray with cottage fries and put ketchup on them. We did not go back to try and eat at the market after that first day. We hit local restaurants instead. So I loved the city Brugge, I really liked all the shops we went into, the lights were fun, but the two Christmas Markets were a bust in my opinion.

I am hoping Brussels is better, but so far Austria is winning hands down if it was a contest.

In a couple of days I will do the Brussels blog.