Day Thirteen, Fourteen & Fifteen: Belgium

Greetings from Bruges (also known as Brugge). I’m writing this blog post from a very cute little hotel called the Martin’s Relais Oud Huis Amsterdam situated right beside a canal that runs through the city.

But before I get into that, let me back track for a moment and talk about how we got here.

We got up early Friday morning to take a train from the Hague to Brussels, Belgium. The train was fun because we got to ride in the first class car. It was about a two-hour ride and we got into Brussels at about 10:30am. Across the street from the train station was our hotel, which we couldn’t have asked to be in a better location. It was right in the middle of all the action, so to speak. Minutes away from the city square (the Grand Palace), a number of beautiful churches and all the museums that Brussels has to offer, basically, it was a short walk from anything that we wanted to check out. Brussels is a wonderfully old city, and as long as you stay in the right areas, it’s gorgeous; full of old statues and architecture sprinkled with modern design. For example, their shopping mall looked like this:



We couldn’t check into our room at the hotel until 3:00pm, but we were able to leave our backpacks with the concierge, thankfully. Traveling with a laptop is heavier than I thought! We set out with nothing but a map and our camera, which had suffered a fall coming home from Delft and has since then become a little finicky. Can’t afford to buy a new one, however, so we’ll just have to adapt to it’s new eccentricities.

We wandered through the streets, stopping and marveling at the various statues, monuments and old buildings. I spotted a cool looking statue of Bela Bartok, a Belgian composer who’s early 20th century music I learned through the Royal Conservatory Piano music books. Brings me back to my younger days.

Stopping in the Palace Square for our first Belgian beer, we studied the beautifully royal architecture lining the square full of tourists. Rob and I couldn’t help thinking about what it would look like in an older, more regal time, when the king’s court would be milling through the square on their daily business, the royal finance ministers working out the taxes of the kingdom, the chamber maids doing the royal clean-up… There’s something so cool about seeing history right in front of you. I’m not used to that in Canada.




Wandering out of the city square, we took a winding side street that led to less tourist saturated cafes. We picked out a cute little café for lunch and I enjoyed a salad with warm goat’s cheese and Rob had Lasagna, while sharing a bottle of wine served to us in the best portable ice bag ever!

After lunch, we found a gallery that had an exhibition dedicated to the costumes for Brussels’ favourite bronze baby, the Manneken-Pis . This peeing baby is the heart of Brussels’ folklore and is loved by the entire country. The lore is that a man lost his son, and he vowed that when he found him, he would had a sculpture created of his son doing whatever he was doing when he was finally found. Apparently he was relieving himself.




Belgians have taken it upon themselves to create outfits to dress the baby and over the years there have been hundreds of costumes created for him either commemorating holidays, seasons, parties, or just plain fun. The exhibition marked the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and displayed costumes made in a variety of countries including Spain, Malta, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, Ireland, and many more. Although it wasn’t on display this time around, they have one from Canada… and of course it is a hockey uniform! We bought postcards with the picture of the Canadian outfit.

Brussels also has a number of big old churches. We took a few pictures of some of the more interesting ones, but this was my favourite relic (and the best picture we got, considering our camera was not co-operating).



On the second day, we went to the Bozar Museum of Art with free ticket vouchers from our hotel. The voucher allowed us free admission into one of the three exhibitions there. We chose to check out “A Passage to Asia”. It portrayed, through various artifacts, 25 Centuries of Exchange between Asia and Europe. It was actually put together for a Asian/European Trade Summit, and it was very interesting to keep this in mind as we went through the gallery. Very cool statues, textiles, drums, jewelry and other artifacts from Japan, Korea, China, Myanmar, Mongolia, and India. My favourite was the room of artifacts collected from sunken trade ships between Asia and Europe. Some of these artifacts even had coral or shells still stuck to them! Super crazy!

We also went to the Musical Instrument Museum which was SO much fun! It was this Museum of all kinds of instruments from many different cultures, times, countries, and styles from accordions to bagpipes to pipe organs to pianofortes to glass horns to African drums to two-necked clarinets. And the best part was that they provided you with wireless headphones that picked up different frequencies tied to specific showcases throughout the museum. As you walked from showcase to showcase, the headphones would play a selection of music that corresponded with the instruments you were looking at. Absolutely wonderful! It would be a great place to take kids to teach them about music. There's even an area on the bottom floor where you can play some instruments and experiment with different string tensions and wind instrument dynamics. I don't have any pictures, but maybe if you ever find yourself in Brussels, you should give it a go.

We found a groccery store and bought some sandwiches and salad and fruit and beverages to have a picnic in the park, which was fun. We fed the birds, these little sparrows who flocked around our feet like ravenous vultures. They were really cute... I wish we had gotten pictures of them.

For dinner we had the Belgian specialty, mussels. Not something I'd want every day, but surprisingly good. I've never had them fresh before.

On Sunday morning we took the train into Bruges. Our Hotel was closer to the Northern side of the city while the train station was on the South, so we had a little while to walk to finally get there. It gave us a chance to see some of the most beautifully maintained old buildings I've seen yet in Europe. I haven't seen the movie "In Bruges", but now I feel like maybe I should see it, just so that I can point at things in the movie and say "I WAS THERE!!"



We found the main cathedral in Bruges which was very pretty. They had just finished mass so there was still the cloud of incense hanging in the air and mass-goers filing out. The church was lovely and they also have an original Michelangelo sculpture there, one of the very few that exist outside of Italy.




We found our way to the old city square, and stumbled upon a grand stand facing a full orchestra. It was free and open, so we climbed up and listened to the orchestra for a while, which was fun. (video coming soon)

Later on, we were walking through the streets and a motorcycle tour of epic proportions passed us by. We took a video of it, just to show the scale of the tour... there had to be well over a hundred bikes and scooters riding through the narrow streets of Bruges. The video I'm posting is over 3 minutes long, so if you're not super interested in watching the whole thing, that's okay. (video coming soon)

We passed this Modern art gallery called the Absolute Art Gallery which had some great stuff in it! Especially liked the sculptures and this artist who made large scale high contrast monochromatic portraits. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the gallery, but I did get this picture from through the front window. I like how it looks like a double exposure because you can see the reflection in the window.





We also walked to Van Eyck Square, which was interesting (especially because I like Van Eyck and we saw some of his work at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam). We found some info on the square and the architecture around it, which was cool. I was able to take pictures of all the buildings it was talking about so I've organised it here for your viewing. Click on the image to see a larger size.



I finally finished the blog post on the train (in first class) on the way home from Belgium. Rob took a picture of me to show just how hard I've been working on the blog. It certainly takes time! This week should be a little easier because we won't be traveling again until Friday. But we DO have the Zoo on Wednesday. YAY!!! ANIMALS!