A "Lesser Known Bruges" Walkabout

Our lovely B and B host, Riet, has an abundance of tourist stuff, including a book on Bruges with some detailed walking tours.  It's time we saw more of this unique town than just the tourist hot spots.  A walk in the book promises sights in the 'Lesser Known Bruges' so off we go.

We're zooming across the Markt to the 'less traveled lanes' when we both stop and stare . . . 

Tim thinks they're advertising some sort of sci-fi movie . . . whatever they are, they're colorful and consent to photo-ops.

After walking for 10-15 minutes we're in a totally different part of town, residential, quiet and very local feeling.  The big draw here is the Church of St. Giles (Gillis) which dates back to the 1300's.  Much of it was destroyed during the anti-papist years and has been completely restored.  It's a peculiar but strangely harmonious mix of baroque and neo-Gothic.

We are the only visitors and are greeted warmly by a woman attendant who tells us she's Iranian, Catholic, and married to a Belgian.  We ask what she thinks of the recent US-Iran Nuclear pact and she just shakes her head 'You can't trust them, not for a minute.'  That's encouraging . . . 

I just loved this doorway . . . the sign in the door said 'Enter at Your Own Risk'.  We didn't . . .

 A gorgeous view down one of the 'lesser known' canals . . .

  

Part of our walk is along the ramparts of the city which on the eastern side are dotted with the iconic windmills (wait a minute, aren't windmills Dutch??).  

We got absolutely soaked yesterday while walking home so with the skies clouding up, we decide to abbreviate our walk and make for home.  

Our downstairs sitting area and breakfast table, with a view of the garden.  Lovely, caring hostess and sweet accommodation.  Tomorrow we're off to Koln (Cologne) and an overnight with Ilse in Bonn.

We've had an excellent adventure in Holland and Belgium!

In Search of Michelangelo's Mother and Child . . . and Finding Fidel

It's Sunday and for those of you who've followed our past adventures, you know we find a church (usually a Catholic church) or more accurately, a mass.  Today we're off to the Church of Our Lady snd we're only about 20" late for the mass.  Fortunately, Tim knows the sequence and tells me we're about halfway through; we're hoping that for our contribution to the offertory we can get a peak at the famous Michelangelo's Mother and Child, the only one of his works to leave Italy during his lifetime.

The problem is that the mass is in Belgian (?), German, Dutch - some language we certainly don't understand.  What we do catch is the invitation for anyone who wants to see the rest of the church which is under renovation, follow the group out to the right of the altar.  Thinking we're pretty slick and going to get an insider's peak at the Michelangelo, we join the crowd and go 'behind the scenes' and are treated to a long lecture on the state of the renovations . . . in a language we still don't understand!  Hoping, hoping, hoping that we will finish at the statue, we hang in there . . . I take a few photos:

Loved the juxtaposition of Tyvek and stained glass . . .

And this strange hand sticking out of the wall . . .

One of the many altars, either already renovated or not in need of it . . .

After about 15-20" we decide we've had enough and the Michelangelo doesn't appear to be housed in the construction area (duh!) but maybe we can find it on our own.  Now this is a huge church, one of the largest in all of Bruges (which boasts over 1100 churches - they're now down to 1 brewery from 1100 - for this population of 25,000).  And, voila, I spy what looks very much like the Madonna with Child!  And there are only a few people there . . .

Oh duh, the reason there are only a few people there is that this isn't IT!!  It's nice, it's marble, it's about the right size, right subjects, but it's not the real thing . . . we turn around and see this long line of folks, each of whom are forking over 8 euros to look at the 'real' thing.  We've had enough; we'll catch some more Michelangelos on our next trip to Italy.  Time for our canal boat ride - the number 1 tourist thing to do in Bruges.

The wait is short and the boats are comfortable and not terribly crowded.

We see a number of places we walked yesterday, this time with a new perspective.  Interesting . . . Bruges is often compared with Venice (they call Venice the 'Bruges of the South') but unlike Venice where the canals are the commercial and tourist arterials, Bruges has no commercial boats, save these tour boats.  There are no boathouses, no moorings, no access from the houses that front the canals and, other than the boat that makes the journey from Bruges to Dam, apparently no other water traffic.  And these canals are very shallow - only 1-2 meters deep.

The public hospital with a gate (white wood) for the admitting of quarantined patients (by boat).  For many years, this hospital not only treated the sick and wounded, it was also an inn and provided food and shelter for travelers, hence the word 'hospitality'.  The nuns from the nearby Beguinage staffed the hospital and the inn.

Definitely one of the lowest clearance bridges on the canals; even the shortest of us couldn't help but duck.

One of the more spectacular views, the tower of the Church of Our Lady.

This wood-cladded building has nothing to recommend it architecturally or historically; its fame comes from it being the setting for a recent movie, "In Bruges", starring Colin Farrell (another stimulus to tourism!).  Apparently, Colin Farrell jumped out of one of these windows in his hotel room and landed either in the water or in the adjacent pub.

My favorite shot on the whole tour - Fidel the dog in his typical resting point in the window. He even has a pad to soften the window sill!

Lovely excursion and a wonderful way to experience Bruges. . . . even if we didn't get to see the Michelangelo.

25,000 Residents and 5,000,000 Tourists a Year

No, that is not a typo; the latest estimates are that approximately 5 million tourists come to this charming town every year.  Given that there are only about 25,000 residents inside the walled city (there are about 100,000 in the 'greater Bruges' area) that makes for some pretty crowded streets, especially right in the center of 'the egg' which is exactly how Bruges is shaped.

Our B and B is just off the page to the right, about a 15" walk to the Markt.  The canal in the upper right joins the main waterway to the sea which is only about 7 miles away.  The small town of Dam was the off-loading point for large ships, and the barges were then pushed or poled up the canals into Bruges.  

This map - which we folded, refolded, and turned every which way while trying to find our way around - gives you some idea of the tangle of streets and canals.  Streets change names, some are unmarked, and the names are utterly foreign to us (Peterguildenstrasse was one of the easy ones).

We arrived on a Friday and after settling in, finding a lovely local spot for dinner, we decide Saturday will be our first official outing.  Mmmm. . . us and maybe a 100,000 others whom we're convinced are here on day trips from neighboring cities and countries!  The Markt feels like wall-to-wall tourists, but we persevere and find the Red Vest City Guides who do a free walkabout tour twice a day.  Our guide, Wilhelm, is stunned by the size of his group but soldiers on.  Tim thinks there are close to 75 of us, following like scrambling ducklings to keep up with Wilhelm, who fortunately holds his guidebook high so we don't lose sight of him in this crowd.

A must stop in Bruges, the Beguinage.  We stop on the bridge and learn the history of this remarkable place and order.  Interestingly, the Beguines are not nuns in the traditional sense; they do not take vows and are free to leave at any time.  Just over the entranceway are the words 'Sauve Garde' which we're told means this is a place of sanctuary; or put differently, the nuns refused to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the town!

The inside is absolutely serene and beautiful.  Apparently, the springtime bloom of daffodils is a town-wide celebration.  Today we see a different form of celebration, thanks to an art exhibit with installations all over the town.  Here we have tree houses . . .

The artist apparently wanted to recapture the innocence of childhood as symbolized by a treehouse but without any way to get up to or down from, that innocence is out of reach . . . but not to be forgotten.

From this serene setting, we're off to the commercial side of Bruges, the main intake canal where the taxman waited!  Every incoming load of goods was overseen by the Lords of Gruuthuse and from the smallest Gothic window, the taxman was overseen in secret!

The structure where the taxman/tollkeeper made his collections (the spy window is out of frame on the left).

A gorgeous statue of what I believe is the most illustrious of the Gruuthuse sons.

The Gruuthuse complex is under renovation but this poster reflects their power.

Note the pendant - a sheep in gold (the 'golden fleece'?) and perhaps the origin of the phrase 'getting fleeced'?

Next stop, the palace square.  Wilhelm tells us that there are 4 - or is it 5? - centuries of architecture represented here.  He names them; I've forgotten them!  However, several facades are not original but so faithfully recreated it would take an expert to tell the difference.

Over the smaller archway is the town symbol - the bear of Bruges - widely believed to be the very first resident.  BTW - Bruges is actually a corruption or mangling of the Norse 'Bryghia' meaning 'landing place'.

Just across the Palace Square is another of the contemporary art installations - think this says it all about Bruges!

We're at the end of our walking tour and each participant is given a chit for some Belgian chocolate, Belgian beer, and a discount on a plate of Belgian waffles.  All the remaining ducklings (think we've lost about half along the way) follow Wilhelm to the chocolatier where we each get a wee taste of the chocolate (milk not dark) and then hie off to the beer garden.

It's a mob scene but we manage a slot at the bar and a fellow walker offers me his seat, and we rapidly strike up a conversation.  He's from San Diego!  We trade emails and he sends me a snap from his iPhone.  Such fun to talk to you, Ron; who knew I'd get into a deep conversation about organizational dynamics and leadership in a Belgian bar!

This post has run on so I'll make the canal boat tour - and maybe our Sunday church outing - another one.  

From a 'Dead Town' to the Cultural Capital of Europe

Welcome to Bruges!  This may be one of the few World Heritage Cities in the world.  It started simply enough - one or two structures made 'the list' and then, voila, November 2000, the entire old city was declared a UNESCO site and in 2002 the 'Cultural Capital of Europe'.  What's so wonderfully ironic is that this classic medieval Flemish city is beautifully preserved because it was abysmally poor for four centuries.  From the mid 9th century until well into the 16th century, Bruges was a thriving town. But a series of events, including the silting of the main canal which inhibited the transport of goods, conspired to drive Bruges into a severe depression which lasted almost 400 years! The Industrial Revolution passed it by, and were it not for a number of emigres (Brits mostly) who moved here precisely because it was affordable (read 'cheap'), who knows. . .

On their way to and from the site of the Battle of Waterloo (1815), British vets with their families in tow wanted to revisit where they'd defeated Napoleon.  Coming and going they passed through Bruges.  They quickly figured out that Bruges was poor, but British pensions went much farther and allowed them to live quite well, compared to the locals that is.  The fact that Bruges had somewhere around 1100 breweries may also have factored into their decision . . .

What those early visitors might have seen . . . (minus the canal boats!)

By the mid-19th century the British ex-pat population numbered several thousand and, remarkably, the very first guide book to Bruges was written by an Englishman.  The end of the 19th century brought another bit of fame (infamy?) to Bruges and that was the publication of Georges Rudenbach's "Bruges la Morte" - yes, you got it, Bruges The Dead.  It was somewhat of a publishing sensation (translated into 7 languages) and, no surprise, attracted a whole new generation of tourists, eager to see this disaster of a city and its downtrodden inhabitants (wonder if the same thing might work in the States - "Detroit la Morte"?).

And, once again, Bruges exerted its unique charm (remember it still looked like a medieval town) which must have been very refreshing considering what many of Europe's and America's cities were starting to look (and smell) like by this time.  These tourists became residents and the town began its renaissance, truly its rebirth.   And all without the help of Disney!  The rest, as the say, is history . . .

On our way into town through one of the original medieval gates.

The absolute center of Bruges, the 'Markt', with the bell tower in the distance.

And pride of place, a statue to the two Belgians who defeated the French, drove them out, and established Belgian's independence.

Next post, our walkabout and canal boat tour, the only way to see Bruges.