83m high belfry will be found here in Brugge which is the central part  of the main wing of the 13th century.

Bellfries symbolised  the deep human  urge for freedom and democracy.

The bellfry is accessible tower that provides  a fascinating view  over the whole of the city, showing the spatial relationship between the trade  of the market place and the administrative buildings around the center square.

Here you will see the following::

-administrative building "Burg" square with its town hall

-Country house / landhuis

-Griffe /recorders house

-Proosdij /Provost´s house

This place has been inscribed upon the World Heritage  list from UNESCO Convention for its exeptional universal  value of cultural sites for protection.

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After talkng to some travbuddys, sayng that 'brugge' is so good, I thought I should go see it. Aftr droppng 'jamie' of at the airport, I took the train to 'brussls.' There we took the train to 'brugge' for a day.

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After we had made connections from Lille, France Kortrijk and Hazebrouke, Belguim, we arrived late into Brugge. We had called a hotel to see if we could get accommodations, but never could find the place. So we went to a bar instead. Neither of us could remember the name of the place, but we will never forget its "Happiest" customer. Arturo was a gentleman we met who was singing and relished to tell us stories of all kinds. Needless to say Arturo was a little "tipsy", but kept singing and expounding, "Everybody's Happy!",  in his thick accent. What a character. He kept us entertained until closing time, bid us "adeiu" and wandered out into the crisp night. We walked back through a park that seemed to have all kinds of nocturnal activities going on. Thinking we should get along we went back to the train station and found it locked. It was about 4am, so we sat out front and Darla snoozed while I watched the night turn to twilight. At 6am the doors opened and we bought tickets to Amsterdam. Though it would be stopping in Brussels, it would continue on to our destination. The train was at its platform so we boarded and passed out immeadiately. We missed alot of countryside through Beguim and the Netherlands, but needed the sleep.

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Named after Marc Chagall the painter. We found this place right after getting of the train. Classical music and reproductions of the artist's work flowed throughout the space. The seating and charm of the room was quaint. I ordered a beer and a plate that was basically a meat medley: venison, pork sausage and chicken, cooked just the way I like it. Venison medium rare, sausage crisp and chicken baked and moist. It came with sauteed, seasoned potatoes and mixed vegetables. Over all it was very hearty and filling for a big guy like myself.

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Very friendly people, great breakfast, good location.

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Natuurlijk waren we ook vandaag weer vrij bijtijds ons bed uit. We hebben ons ontbijt netjes weggewerkt en daarna was het weer spullen inpakken en wegwezen. Het eerste doel van vandaag was Brugge, en hier waren we al om een uur of half tien. We parkeerden vlakbij de Grote Markt, dit was dus een prima oriëntatiepunt om de auto weer terug te vinden.

Op deze Grote Markt stonden al een aantal aardige bouwwerken, waaronder een toren die je kon beklimmen. Deze klim was 366 treden hoog, en tegen de tijd dat we boven kwamen waren we behoorlijk buiten adem. Het uitzicht was schitterend mede doordat het vrij helder weer was. We hebben hier dus even heerlijk genoten voordat we de terugweg weer aanvaarden.

Eenmaal weer op de begane grond aangekomen besloten we eerst de inwendige mens te verzorgen en dat werd hoog tijd. Na de koffie of thee liepen we weer wat verder en zo kwamen we bij het stadhuis terecht, dat ook zeker niet een te verwaarlozen optrekje is. Je kon het ook van binnen bezichtigen, wat we dus ook deden, en zeker de Gotische Zaal was zeer de moeite waard.

We liepen weer terug naar de auto over de braderie en juist vanwege deze braderie duurde het vrij lang voor we eindelijk Brugge uitreden, want het was een drukte van belang.

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Went back to Brugge for the day. This time I decided to try to touristy boat tout, which brings you along the canals in the center of town, down to the Minnewater (first time I saw this!) and then back to the center again.  Seeing the Minnewater from the boat, as well as the brewery right nearby was enough to encourage me to head back down that way following the boat tour.  The Brewery was already closed (see future Brugge journal entries) but got my first introduction to the Minnewater, probably the most romantic part of the city.

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Jay, a colleague from Wilton who had been living in Holland for almost two years, brought a few of us to Brugge for the day.  This was my first time in the city, but far from my last.  These days, more often than not, I am bringing new colleagues to the city and introducing them to many of the same places I saw for the first time this day.

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Zot is today the only beer that is actually brewed and lagered inside of the city walls of Brugge (Bruges), the fierce medieval town in Flanders, the Venice of the North, one of the three most beautiful cities in Western Europe. I had the fortune to visit this place together with my girlfriend and my collegues and the spouces. We had a guided tour around the facilities before we actually got the the more fun part of tasting the beer - or so I thought. The museum presents the unique opportunity to discover the old tradional brewing methods in Bruges. Daily guided tours will allow you to visit both the modern brewery as the museum. Our experienced guides will teach you everything about malt and hops.We had a fantastic guide for these tour, besides being very factual about everything of the brewery process she had fantastic anekdotes from the past and the present. I cant remember having a guide with such a well written timed comedy. It was just awesome and enormously fun. About the beer; They brewed two kind of beer a brown beer which we didn't test called the Brugse Zot double, with 7,5 % Vol alc. It is brewed with 6 special kinds of malt, which give the beer a rich taste. The worldly renowned Tcheque Saaz hop from Zatec has been chosen to give the beer this unique bitter note. Brugse Zot double is a fill and stronger beer, highly appreciated by the beerlovers. The other one is the more wellknown pale blond ale, that was crowned with a white head. The taste was blooms with a fruity pronounced aroma, hints of lemon, and hits the palate with a refreshing dryness, embellished by hints of spices and orange, balanced by an underlying faint malty sweetness. I Belgium this is one of the lighter Pale golden ales with an alcohol content of only 6%, pretty low in these neighbourhood. The beer finishes with a short, fruity taste that somewhat sticks to the palate. It is be a great beer to drink with friends and family around the dinner table, it goes with most dishes where it brings refreshment and cleansing of the palate. The fruity dryness and the relatively low alcohol content make it a great refreshing beer to drink with company during pleasant times, or moments of extreme fun. Because of the more conservative use of hops, and thus the lack of an outspoken bitterness, this beer is very well suited to use in the preparation of food dishes and deserts.

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Brugge is a very nice small city situated only 100 km from Brussels. The city is as many others known as the Venice of the North, Brugge is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. This was a justified motive that prompted UNESCO in 2000 to include the entire historical city centre on the World Heritage list. Walking along the maze of winding cobbled alleys and romantic canals, you very fast imagine yourself to be in medieval times - houses are just amazing if you are to old ones. The wealth of museums is a striking image of this city's stirring history.

I caught the nasty 48 bus to the main 
center and then walked the 1 km to the 
meeting point for my tour. The first 
stop of the tour was at a town called 
Gent. Gent is a very beautiful old town 
with some buildings going back to 1100’s. 
apart from walking around all the streets 
and being told all the history of the 
area, I stopped inside a church to see 
a famous painting done by a local 
artist. Art is not my thing so I don’t 
remember many of the details about the 
painting except for the fact that it had Adam and Eve on it and eve was shown 
pregnant which is apparantly a very rare thing to show.

From gent we had another hour bus ride before we got to Brugge, it is often 
referred to Venice of the north as it has canals running through the whole town. 
It was about 1pm when we arrived there 
so we all went straight to a restaurant, 
its an interesting restaurant as the 
menu is written in 6 languages. I chose 
to have typical Flemish things and so 
I ordered cheese croquettes and beef 
stew. It was very tasty but the bill at 
the end wasn’t so nice, for the 6 of us 
at the table the bill came to 160 euros! 
That’s just for a lunch with 1 drink 
each. We continued on foot and explored 
the town, it has some of begiums oldest 
buildings including Europes oldest 
hospital which was used from around 
1200 right upto 1976.

Brugge is also famous as being one of the only places outside of Italy 
to have a Michelangelo sculpture, the one in a church in bruge is of 
Madonna holding a baby. Apparently a bishop commissioned Michelangelo 
to do the work but then he became the Pope. 
The pope had a falling out with 
Michelangelo and refused to buy the 
finished Madonna from him, needing 
money Michelangelo ended up selling it 
to a wealthy family who promptly 
shipped it to Brugge. I didn’t really 
think much of the statue myself
and found the stainglass inside the 
church much prettier. 

There are 12 horse and carts in Brugge 
that ride people around town, not 
really a fan of the horse (was 
knocked out by one as a child) I went 
on the canal cruise instead. On the 
cruise you can see why its called Venice of he north as the canals go 
everywhere and all have tiny low bridges over the top for people. Some 
of these bridges are so low that the boat only just fits under. It was 
a good way of seeing some of the sights from a different perspective. 

Our last stop before returning to Brussels was a typical Belgium chocolate shop. 
It had a large range and was quite reasonable in price with 500g being 6 euros. 
I like everyone else there bought loads of choccies and then we had the long bus 
ride back into Brussels. We arrived in Brussels at around 7:30pm and then I had 
to walk to the bus stop, I really hate buses and it took forever to arrive 
(this is why i fly everywhere). I eventually got back to my hotel at 9pm and 
definitely had enough for one day.

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Brugge is a very old city, already mentioned in 892 A.D. The town was situated near the Zwin with direct link to the North sea and became an important port and tradecenter. However, the port got silted. The craft-guilds got much influence, but were overpowered by the merchants. In the late 13th century Brugge was occupied by Jacques de Chatillon under the flag of the French king. The craft-guilds  kicked the French out (Brugse Metten). This leaded to the famous Battle of the Golden Spurs, about which the writer H. Conscience wrote a great novel. It's this novel that brought my interest in Brugge.

Brugge is a pearl. It has a picturesque and well kept medieval character with canals and walls, old gates and windmills, churches and other beautiful old buildings: the belfort, halls, town hall, Saint Johns hospital, beguinage, Minnewater, St. Salvator cathedral etc. etc. Just have a long walk in the center and you'll discover some lovely spots!

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Driesterrenhotel gelegen in de rustige Sint-Gilliswijk met alle belangrijke bezienswaardigheden (de Markt, de Burg, het chocolade museum, jan van Eijk plein, de grachten, en de rest van mooi historisch brugge), monumenten en musea op wandelafstand. Dus na het heerlijk ontbijtje, geserveerd buffet in de ontbijtzaal, wandel je door mooie straten gelijk al in het centrum naar waar je ook heen wilt. Een heerlijke sfeer komt je tegemoet, al wanneer je opstaat... Erg leuke plek om te verblijven. Met inlevering van airmiles betaalden wij 69,00 euro voor 2 nachten per persoon in het weekend.

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While looking at a map while planning our backpacking trip (only about 2 months before), I noticed that Belgium was conveniently located between France and Amsterdam. Also, the Eurail pass groups it into "one country" (Eurail users will understand this) along with Amsterdam and Luxembourg. As I was already passing through Belgium to go from Paris to Amsterdam (one cannot forget to go to Amsterdam) and probably passing through it again to take some cheap flight from Paris or Brussels to go to Rome, I thought it would be a good idea to have a small pied-à-terre there. After speaking to many travellers (including my mom's friend), we decided to sta in Brugge.
For those who don't know, Brugge is a medieval town near the North Sea. It has canals (that are not drained and renewd like those in Amsterdam, by the way), that connects it to the sea. It's a part of the Wolrd Heritage program (or something like that), which means that it's valued and protected for its historic nature. We stayed at the Hotel "Flats" Leopold, which I think we found on www.hostelbookers.com. It's a lovely 2 star hotel, right across the street to the (HUGE) tourist information center. The tourist center is an eyeswore, but easy to see through the parc from the train station, which is only about 300 feet away. My lovely boyfriend and I were quite confused at first, because the address led to a bar that was called Leopold. But soon after, we realised that we just had to take the alley in the back of it to access the back and top floors, where they rented rooms. A big dog came to greet us, which was no problem at all, since I had begun to miss my dog and other cirtters weeks ago. A very friendly Belgian lady took us in and we instanly were enchanted by the quaint, homey atmosphere. After climbing about 50+ steps of a very narrow, spiral staircase, we unlocked the door to our "family-size" bedroom. We didn't mind the extra room. After that we pretty much just changed (or maybe not even) and headed out down Steenstratt (forgive my spelling), which led us to the ever-so-popular Groet Markt (Main Square). The shopping was surprisingly good, although I was just anxious to feast on some quintessential Belgian supper. We chose "De Hobbit", inspire by the medieval surroundings I gather. It tooks us a while to find it, but the restauraunt (facing the Tolkien house, yes...) was really charming. When we got there, my boyfriend tried asking the hostess how she was, after she asked him, and they replied with some snicker, which actually really pissed us off. We then realised that people in Brugge genuinely dislike tourists. I don't blame them: they are everywhere! It's like the entire town is now built for tourists... which was sortof what we hoped to avoid. Even the wildlife was tamed, their wings snipped and caged, it was all fake. The chocolate was yummy though, but we found one chocolate shop "Leonidas", which had long ago made its way to Côte-des-Neiges, a street in Montréal. Basically, I was a bit disspointed with Brugge. Even our very short visit to Brussels was unpleasant, where I was yelled at by a controlleur de train, for no reason whatsoever. Maybe it was bad timing, or maybe my sensitivity towards animals... or maybe I was just so damn anxious to get to Rome!

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As I wrote in my previous blog entry we spend a week in Antwerp, but in between we went one day and one night to Brugge.

Brugge is known especially for "kant"  (lace), but also for it's ancient city heart, with the old houses, it's canals and bridges and it is a wonderful city where even when it is busy with tourists you feel at ease, at home. It is almost a must to make a stop over here if oyu have enough time when you are visiting Belgium for the first time. For me and Marc it not only was a day full of citywalks and many talks with cafe au lait, it was also the first night that we finally let ourselves go. For Marc everything was new, I was his first boyfriend, for me he was my second, and so the night we spend in the hotel there, in this huge old wooden bed that felt like a huge carriage, it became a night of passion, of love, and of things which I am not going to mention here (if you really, really want to know, just ask what happened....). But this one day, one night in Brugge, is one of those special moments I will never forget again.

The next morning we went back to Antwerp, our visit of one hour the 10th to Knokke was not really great. We were almost attacked by a bunch of young gay bashers, and it was extremely cold. No use to visit the beach when it is winter we learned.

And Antwerp still had much for us to be discovered. We had plans for the Zoo, the movies, meeting Marc's friend who was working there. And we only had this short week to be together. Our first time together, after a couple of months, just with letters and phonecalls. And, remember, we had no internet to chat!!!

s

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