The Rest of my Bruges Trip

So I left you last on Wednesday morning, having enjoyed a good first day in Bruges on Tuesday. After breakfast on Wednesday (kindly provided by my hostel, simple but adequate), I made my way to the tourist information centre where I bought a 48-hour Bruges city card for easy access to all the city museums plus other important cultural/historical sites, and a boat ride around Bruges canals. I decided I was going to make a stab at as many museums as I could that day. I went to the Memlingmuseum first, a former hospital for pilgrims/travellers/the sick that had in its early days commissioned local artists such as Hans Memling to create art pieces to grace the walls of the hospital. The museum was set up as the original hospital, combining art and medical care (such as it was at the time).

Thursday morning I headed out to the Friet Museum first thing. Who knew that French fries were actually invented by the Belgians? Or that they are delicious eaten with mayonnaise? The museum was very interesting, provided samples of the original tubers that were originally eaten by people in the Andes before being transported to Europe. It was a museum of the history of the potato as much as of the French fry, though there was a snack bar selling fries at the end. The fried snack was invented in the 17th century, and likely confused by the Americans during WW1 who only knew that the commanders who gave them the snack spoke French. Then it was on to the Chocolate Museum...I know, healthy morning for me...I actually thought the Friet Museum was slightly better done, though it was less busy than the Chocolate one. After that, I checked out a number of churches, and ended up at the Beguinage--a beautifully serene place where the Beguine sisters once lived. They were a religious order who sought to serve God without taking all the vows (retreating from the world) that other orders did. The community in which they lived has been preserved as a quiet, restful place. Later that afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a woman in one of the shops in town. She is looking forward to getting out of Bruges (Belgium) and going to Dubai. She had the sense that many young Europeans are looking to leave their homelands and was interested when I said that I'm teaching overseas for a year or two, but intend to return to Canada to settle eventually. I don't know how much truth there is to what she was saying.

entrance to the BeginageI went on the boat tour next, which was a highlight for me. The tour guide was funny and informative, and it was neat to see Bruges from the canals (I had already been on a bus tour the day before). Some of the bridges were quite small, one a few people had to duck to get under it, and there was another one that our guide didn't even try to venture under. Another highlight that afternoon was the Groenigemuseum, which housed many paintings by 16th-century Flemish masters: Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, and ? Pourbos, among others.

Friday I got an email from Eurostar saying no trains were getting through to Brussels yet. So I made plans to travel back the way I came, from Bruges through Kortrijk to Lille--from which I could catch my Eurostar back to London. Again, the trip went very well, for which I was grateful, especially having heard a few horror stories about people who had spent 11 hours and countless trains trying to travel from Amsterdam to Bruges or other such trips. I got a first-class seat on Eurostar since their 2nd-class seats were filled, and I got home at 3:30 pm rather than 9:30, for the original price of 44 quid.

This was my first holiday really on my own, and it went pretty well for the most part. French was not widely used in Bruges as it's a more northern city in Belgium, thus Flemish is the mother language. However, English was almost universally understood and spoken. I enjoyed walking around Bruges and was able to communicate well most of the time. Bruges does shut down early (by 6 pm most places were closed) so a couple of nights I sat in the bar at my hostel with my book/prayer journal/puzzle books. There was no lounge, but at least they didn't make me buy a drink to sit there...: ) I also talked a bit with the Belgian woman and her two daughters who were my roommates the first two nights, and more with the American backpackers (a brother and sister) who were my roommates the last night there.

The greatest highlights on this trip: chocolate; the boat trip; the Groenigemuseum; the Memlingmuseum; discovering new interesting places at the end of another street or alley.