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After a delicious breakfast served to us in our room overlooking the canal, we headed into the Markt planning to climb the Belfort (the bell tower featured in the movie 'In Bruges'😉. The Belfort opens at 9.30am so, by 10.30am when we arrived, there was quite a queue! Since we don't have to do this today we decided to try for an earlier start tomorrow morning and, hopefully, a shorter queue.
From the Markt we ventured around to the Burg where the Basilica of the Holy Blood, a Roman Catholic minor basilica, is located. The upper chapel of the church houses the venerated relic of the Holy Blood. The upper chapel was rebuilt in the Gothic style during the 16th century and renovated a number of times during the 19th century in Gothic Revival style. It is very ornate which is in stark contrast to the lower chapel which is a dark Romanesque structure dedicated to St Basil.
From the church we went next door to the Town Hall where we bought our Museums of Brugge three day tickets for €15.00/each. Brugge Town Hall dates from 1376 which makes it one of the oldest town halls in this part
of Europe. Brugge has been governed and administered from this building for almost 700 years! The Gothic Chamber on the first floor is adorned with 19th-century wall paintings that illustrate stories from the city's past.
Our next stop was the post office to buy a stamp to post a birthday card to Sharon. The card was purchased in Germany without any trouble, but buying a stamp to post it has not been easy!! In Germany we never spotted an actual post office and couldn't work out how to buy a stamp for a non-European destination from the stamp dispensing machines?! When we found the PO in Brussels (yesterday) it was closed because of the Ascension Day holiday. Today we finally managed to buy a stamp. A very helpful man in the PO helped us to buy it from the stamp machine. We probably could have worked it out ourselves, but after the German experience we assumed that we would need to go to the counter for stamps for postage outside of Europe. Not so, the Belgian stamp machines provide a lot more postage options than the German ones!! But we had to pay the €1.10 on the credit card
because the machines don't take notes or coins.
After this we tracked down the Mobistar store in our continuing quest for a broadband only
SIM that we can use in Belgium and France. So, the deal is that the SIM costs €15.00 up front which seems OK, until you are told that actually using it will be at the rate of €0.50/minute!! And that's while we are in Belgium - it will cost even more to use it in France!!! At that price we decided to forego a European SIM and if the blog does not get uploaded regularly well, so be it. Who knows, we may yet find that the barge has wi-fi?? Otherwise we'll have to try to get to a couple of Internet cafes or find other hot spots along the way to upload our travel adventures.
After another al fresco lunch (it's so hard being on holiday!) we headed off to the Groeningemuseum which houses six centuries of Belgian (southern Netherlands) art. The collection includes works by a number of Flemish artists who painted in the primitive style, Renaissance and Baroque masters and Neo-classical and Realistic period paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries
through to art from the Symbolist and Modernist movements, the Flemish Expressionists and some modern art (painted after 1945).
Next we ventured into the Welcome Church of Our Lady which houses a sculpture of the Madonna and Child by Michaelangelo beneath its 122-metre brick steeple that dominates the Brugge skyline. Considered a prime example of Mediaeval stonemasonry, the church also houses the 16th-century ceremonial tombs of Mary of Burgundy and Charles the Bold and some painted tombs from the 13th and 14th centuries.
Next we planned to visit St John's Hospital, but when we arrived we found that it was closed for the afternoon of 2nd June. Ah well, we can try again tomorrow.
On our way back to iRoom we booked a table for dinner tonight at De Refter - the bistro version of De Kameliet which holds three Michelin stars. With it being so busy in Brugge this weekend we could only book for 6.30pm or 9.00pm. We opted for the later sitting so retired to our room to put our feet up for a few hours until dinner time.
We enjoyed a lovely meal at De Refter and then headed into the Burg
and the Markt to take some night photos of the City Hall and the Belfort. With Bernie wanting me to gain some confidence taking photos at night, we only took my camera and he coached me on small apertures and long exposures and walking around with a tripod without tripping over it or having someone's eye out!!
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Janet Morrison
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In Bruges
I wondered if you would be paying homage to "In Bruges" on your visit. I loved the idea of a hitman going sightseeing. It was a great little movie.