Now that the Pentecost / Whitsun holiday weekend is over, it got noticeably quiet in our hotel and in Blankenberge more generallly. We had another leisurely hotel breakfast, but in a DIFFERENT hotel across the street that belongs to the same family and that feeds the guests in our hotel when there are only a handful, and the selection was even bigger than before. But there is still only one one-cup-at-a-time coffee/espresso/ tea maker for all the guests, so there was a bit of a line for that. But we had all slept well and enjoyed dawdling a bit over this lovely meal.
Then we took off for the main destination for the day, Bruges or Brugge, the capital of the province of East Flanders (think states, sort of, but it’s more complicated, because between the nation and the province, there are also three regions as an administrative category, Flanders (language: Flemish, i.e. Dutch with a tweak), Wallonia (French), and Brussels itself (bilingual). Judith and Michael had visited before and their recommendation did not disappoint: the oval city center, surrounded by a canal, is gorgeous and fabulous to walk around in. It was almost untouched by various and sundry wars and has preserved the overall look of a Northern Renaissance city with some crooked-lane medieval touches in spots, and quite a lot of buildings rebuilt or preserved to look like one of the two types. Most buildings are brick and many are gorgeous, and even though the city is not even a tenth of the size of Brussels (118,000 people, 20,000 of which live within the oval) the big market square is just as big, as are the biggest of the Gothic churches and the big city hall and state hall (capitol would be a misleading word). The reason is that Brugge during its Golden Age in the late middle ages and the early Renaissance (1130s-1500) was the much bigger deal, with important trade routes from North (the baltic Hanse cities) and the South (the Italien city states) meeting in the harbor that it gained after a big flood washed out the estuary it sat on. When the port silted up again after 1500, the Golden days were over and the city shrank, but because it was not harmed in any big ways in later wars, was extremely well preserved and is now incredibly picturesque.
Canals criss-cross the city, and the many tourists that were milling around tended to either take tour boats to see the downtown or rent a horse-drawn carriage (most of the driver were on looking down at their smart phones and letting the horses do their thing). Being who we are, we walked around instead, dipping into the occasional courtyard, back alley, and church. We also admired the belfry (campanile) on the main marketplace, but when some of its bells were played at 1 pm, they sounded out of tune and cacophonous. There were two impressive predominantly Gothic cathedrals with the whole nine yards of statuary, groin vaults, stained-glass windows, reliquaries, newly rediscovered grave paintings and frescoes on the walls, etc. etc. (one, the Church of Our Lady, even has the only Michelangelo in it that came North during his lifetime, but we didn’t pay extra to see it). But the church that won my heart was the decommissioned 18th century church of St. Magdalen, which has been taken over by a group that seeks to preserve it. You can see the original features, but there is also some modern art, and–the THING!–they suspended a big swing from the vault. Of course I had Mark give me a push and looked up at the blue ceiling as I was swinging back and forth. Definitely a first! They even gave us a little tiny envelope with a blue flake of paint from the ceiling (currently not in great repair) for our small donation. “Een stukje van de hemel”–a little piece of heaven. It was wonderful, even for non-churchy people like Mark and me.
Unfortunately, we came back to our car to find a ticket–we had used a parking meter machine and paid for three hours, but apparently in a zone where only 30 minutes were allowed? The zone wasn’t marked anywhere, so I am not sure how we should have intuited that. Judith and Michael took some photos and will try to contest the ticket, so we’ll see. We left a little miffed, a little hangry and in need of bathrooms (all bathrooms we saw were charging 1 Euro, and that just brings out the grumpus in me big time–I refuse to pay that much just to go pee!). Unfortunately, our next stop, in an adorable little village called Lissewege, was so small and so out of season after the holiday weekend that it had NO restrooms or eateries (we could have sat in a bar and had a beer). But we did want to see its church with its medieval roots, take a quick look at the tiny whitewashed houses all around it, and–when we discovered that there was a belltower to climb–climb up and look at the East Belgian landscape from above. So we had to suffer a bit more. But Blankenberge was only 5 kilometers away, and a quick grocery-store stop yielded salads, breads, and some sweet bites that we dug into at the hotel (post-WC breaks, and with the car parked nearby for a couple of hours.
Then we took all took a bit of a break (I started the blog while Mark took a nap), and Judith and Michael dropped us off at a nature preserve along a series of ponds (fonteintje–source pools) near the beach just west of town, while they went on to do some souvenir shopping and walk around the city a bit more. Malk and I meandered through the nature preserve, thoroughly enjoying the walk and the unfamiliar bird songs (the birds speak Flemish here, I suppose) but barely catching any glimpses of birds in the underbrush. We walked back partly on top of the dune ridge and then on the beach, with dark clouds and bright sunlight taking turns in quick succession. We spotted a few shore birds that were not seagulls (99% are seagulls), and admired the tiny shells and the dead jellyfish left behind by the receding tide.
We got home good and tired around 7:30 but we were determined to sit somewhere on the promenade for a bit. We shared a light, crispy waffle with whipped cream and ice cream, and Mark tried a local dark beer brewed by monks. Nothing to blog about, really, but sitting in another one of those cages and watch the ocean waves and the clouds was a lovely way to wrap up the day.
