In northwest Belgium, Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of the country.
Our home for the night was Hotel 't Keizershof http://www.hotelkeizershof.be/
It was clean, convenient, affordable, had parking on site, and though it was advertised as a shared bathroom, we had the third floor to ourselves (the two windows on the right side of the building below). It was a wonderful starting spot to explore the pretty city on foot.
Our view out the hotel room window was this pretty building. I took a photo because the end of it was so pretty. I had no idea it was such a big deal (literally). Turns out it's the Minnewater Clinic, a former Catholic hospital for 'needy' women and children, run by the Sisters of Love of Jesus and Mary. It's now a residential care center. It stretches for a couple of city blocks (by Seattle standards) beyond the brick end we spied out our window.
Believe it or not, the first thing we did after dumping our backpacks off at the hotel was head across the canal to a huge flea market, Called Zandfeesten, it's held over three weekends during the summer. (We happened upon it by happy accident - a trend on this vacation.) The market is held in the sprawling Koning Albertpark (King Albert I park).
There were thousands upon thousands of things to see ... everything from comic books to mid-century modern furniture; cuckoo clocks to super antique oddities.
Naturally, since we were traveling abroad and traveling super light, we weren't in a position to pick up much of anything.
But guess what we did find at one booth ... a Shar-pei calendar for 2018. (In case you haven't heard, CJ is obsessed with Shar-pei, and the fact that we found a keepsake at this market made us all very happy.)
After the market, we were all feeling the drag of jet lag. The kids fell asleep for a couple of hours. About 7 p.m., we knew that
The owner of the hotel we stayed in owns a number of properties, including the restaurant next door, de Stoepa.
It was soooo hard getting CJ, especially, out of bed. He wanted to be down for the night, but I knew if we let him be, he'd wake up in a couple of hours, starving, and we had no food to give him.
We took him downstairs, he was draped over the table, but this brought him back to life ... the most amazing plate of spaghetti bolognese we'd ever seen. He inhaled it and two Coka Zeros in no time flat, and he was a new man.
The next morning it was back to the table, this time at another restaurant our hotelier owns,
What a beautiful breakfast.
Can you imagine eating like this every day? A girl can dream, right?
After breakfast, we were off on foot to explore the city. Our eventual destination was the Frites Museum (that's right, an institution paying homage to fried potatoes), but that's a story for another day, like tomorrow.
What a picturesque place Bruges is. There are canals and cobblestone roads all over.
We walked our way toward its world famous market square.
The Grotemarkt sees three to four million visitors a year, per Visit Bruges, and has had a market operated on the site continuously since 985. (Wednesday is Market day. We missed that.)
However, it's a spectacle any day of the year. Below is the provincial court, Provinciaal Hof.
Horse-drawn carriages wait to take you on a tour of the city. The statute in the middle is of Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck, Bruges heroes dating back to the early 1300s.
The imposing Belfry Tower can also be seen from the market. We were treated to the belfry's chiming multiple times during our walk. A medieval bell tower, it was added to the market square around 1240. A devastating fire destroyed much of it, and in 1280, the tower was largely rebuilt.
During our stroll, we walked through a very modern commercial district that had stores qith marquees you'd expect to see in any American mall, including a Claire's and a McDonald's.
The brewery is famous for its beer pipeline under Bruges' streets. Check out this fun factoid, from the brewery's website:
Below: Random old building. Actually, it's not random at all, but my memory is. I think this day in Bruges was the hardest, jet-lag wise. I had There were many, and they were intriguing and compelling and I neglected to catch all of their names.
The Church of Our Lady is another dominant fixture in the Bruges' skyscape. Its tower is 115 metres (377 ft) high, and is the tallest structure in Bruges, so it was a good landmark for us as we were wandering around kind of lost at times. The Church of Our Lady also happens to be the second tallest brickwork tower in the world (second only to St. Martin's Church in Landshut, Germany).
Our last Bruges memory? A swan song - there was a small park with a flock (OK, a game of swans, to be correct, apparently. It's a wedge of swans in the air, and a game on the ground).
There were thousands upon thousands of things to see ... everything from comic books to mid-century modern furniture; cuckoo clocks to super antique oddities.
Naturally, since we were traveling abroad and traveling super light, we weren't in a position to pick up much of anything.
The owner of the hotel we stayed in owns a number of properties, including the restaurant next door, de Stoepa.
We took him downstairs, he was draped over the table, but this brought him back to life ... the most amazing plate of spaghetti bolognese we'd ever seen. He inhaled it and two Coka Zeros in no time flat, and he was a new man.
What a beautiful breakfast.
What a picturesque place Bruges is. There are canals and cobblestone roads all over.
The Grotemarkt sees three to four million visitors a year, per Visit Bruges, and has had a market operated on the site continuously since 985. (Wednesday is Market day. We missed that.)
However, it's a spectacle any day of the year. Below is the provincial court, Provinciaal Hof.
We could even see the belfry when we were visiting the Bruges Bottle Shop, stocking up on some of Belgium's finest - and a couple of IPAs from elsewhere, to please our Seattle palates.
Oh, and did I mention we found some lovely old unicorn art? Check it out in the photo below!
We also happened to cross paths with Del Halve Maan, or Half Moon Brewery (home to Christian's favorite Belgian beer, Brugse Zot).
Since 16th September 2016 our beer travels through our unique pipeline, connecting the brewery in the inner city to the bottling plant, over a distance of 3.2 km. This unique project was not only realized to reduce the heavy truck traffic in the inner city and the ecological footprint but also to keep the production where it has been for the last 160 years. The first “zotte” ideas started in 2012 when there were works on the utilities on the Walplein. A similar project never had been attempted so it came with an array of challenges. The pipeline was inaugurated with an unforgettable party, many of the crowdfunders who made this project possible were part of the honor guests. There were numerous interviews regarding the pipeline and we were in the news worldwide!
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