Bruges - Day 3

I decided to get up a littler earlier today and actually have breakfast for the first time on this entire trip since I didn't really eat dinner the night before.  The woman running the dining room at the hotel is from Australia and kind of gave me a hard time the day before about skipping out on breakfast and reminded me I had already paid for it so I should make sure to come down and eat.  I'm glad I did because I was much hungrier than I realized.  Plus I'd been missing out on lots of great meats and cheeses and breads for breakfast since leaving Berlin.

After breakfast I just took my time getting ready to head out.... loaded my photos from my camera onto the computer and onto a backup hard drive I'd brought with me, and ran through them really quick to see if I had gotten any good photos from the day before.  There are a lot of photos I am sure I'll always like because I was here, but not nearly as many that would make for good "artistic" kind of shots although I do have an idea with some of them that might really make them fit the mood of this city.  I was certainly more in tourist mode the day before and I could see in in my photos.  That's not always a bad thing through.

I decided to start the day by heading over to the museum and checking out the Salvador Dali exhibit even though the only real art by him that I knew was his famous melting clock stuff.  I'd seen some of his other work before but not enough to where I could have picked it out in an art book if it wasn't captioned.  Needless to say, if you've ever seen his paintings, etchings and sculptures before, he is a little out there sexually in his work.  There were some pretty strange and interesting concepts in his work and he had a number of different series that were all pretty cool to see together.  You could really see how his work changed over time and even over the series he would be putting together.  I enjoyed the show a lot, but was disappointed to see that in all the work they had displayed there, the melting clocks were not included.   I was really looking forward to seeing them in person, but maybe some other day.

The Winter Fest started here today and all the little booths were open around the square so I wandered around checking out what they had for sale and enjoying watching all the people that were here today.  The square and streets were a lot busier today for sure... and I'm not sure how much of that had to do with the Christmas Festival starting and how much was just because it as Friday night and the weekend was here.  There were a lot of tourists from England here for the weekend from what I could hear and with the Chunnel now, it's a very easy and cheap trip for them to make.  I was jeaslous thinking about how easy it would be to travel to a new country every weekend now that the trip across the English Channel was about 2 hours now.

After I started to get really cold walking around I thought it would be a good time to jump on the City Bus Tour and take the 45 minute ride around the city to hear what I may have missed and learn some of the history here.  If you've never been to Bruges before, let me just say that this is a tour  you can really skip and not miss anything.  For the money you pay, you can buy a book abound the city and see and learn so much more just walking around.  I was disappointed, but at least I'd warmed up a bit.  I just wandered around pretty aimlessly the rest of the day here, and after looking at my Fitbit realized that my day of leisure still had me walking just over 9 miles.... so much for resting my poor feet.  Since this was my last night in town and I'd seen pretty much everything I wanted to, I headed back to the hotel early to pack my stuff back up since I wanted to try to sleep in tomorrow.  Bruges was very cool and a beautiful old city, but I can see how this is one of those places you would have more fun with if you were with someone special.  There is a romantic feel to the city that you just can't take advantage on by yourself.  LOL

Tomorrow is a travel day ... leaving here and heading to Heidelberg.  I'm going to try to make the best of the day on the train to just relax and catch up on some reading and maybe even watch a movie or two.  It's been weird not watching TV for almost 3 weeks now.

Bruges - Day 2

My plan when I got up today was to head out fairly early and walk the outer ring canal of the city, taking a look at all the gates that were still in place from the Medieval  Days when the only way in and out of the city was through these gates.  

There is a nice park like area that runs along the canal with nice paths for both walking and biking, and like most of this trip so far, it was a beautiful fall-like day.  As you walk around the old city limits and you look inward, you can almost imagine what life must have been like back then.  It almost has the feel of a city straight out of Game of Thrones, where everything is still cobblestone and you can almost hear the horses and carriages making their way to market.

One thing I hadn't expected to see here were Windmills and as it turns out Bruges has 4 of them along the eastern side of the ring.  That's 3 more Windmills than I saw in Holland while I was there.... and Holland is the country known for them.  Go figure right?

Something else that stood out, is that there wasn't really all that much traffic in the city center, at least not nearly what I would have imagined from the number of buildings and shops here. Traffic wasn't heavy but it was very steady as I began to realized every time I went to take a photo.  As one car / cyclist left the photo another would enter... spaced almost perfectly apart, to the point that I started to wonder if I was on some kind of weird hidden camera show and they were just messing with me to see how long it would take before I would give up waiting and just shoot the photo and move on. LOL

After making my way around the outer ring and checking the maps posted at every tourist attraction I'd seen most of what I could see on the eastern side and then I just began weaving my way back and forth into the city, checking out all the cool churches and buildings I could see.  Some of the streets where pretty narrow and it looked like most of them were one way.  It was almost like walking through a maze which I found a lot of fun, just seeing if I could remember all the twists and turns I was taking as I tried to slowly work my way towards the main square and then back out again in another direction.

It was really interesting to watch the drivers and cyclists doing the same thing and they flew up and down the little alleys.  I funny thing I noticed during the day though, was that the drivers here had a very bad habit of stalling their cars on a regular basis.  I don't think I've ever seen or heard so many cars stall out at stops and then have to b what e restarted.  I wasn't really sure what that was all about?  They all acted like it was a totally normal thing to do though, so I'm thinking they must just use really watered down gas here and the cars just can't idle on it... yeah, that would be my excuse anyway. LOL

All in all, it was just a perfect day for walking and taking in the city, and I began to realize if you only had one day to do it, you could....as long as you didn't also want to take the time to shop and sit in restaurants eating and drinking and people watching.  I'd given myself 2 full days here, and by the end of the day today, I'd seen and taken photos of just about everything I could think of here.

Even though I can't speak the language at all here, when you see things in writing, it's pretty easy to figure out what almost everything says.  It's a weird mixture between German and English and some of it almost looks like it was made up because it's so
close to one of those two with just a little spelling twist.

Okay, enough rambling for today, my feet are actually feeling the miles for the first time on this trip and I think some of that has to do with the cobblestones I walked on for 10+ hours today. I think tomorrow will be a much more laid back day since I'd seen so much today.  There are a few sights I still want to take in, a couple I want to go back and re-shoot, and then I think I might take in a City Bus Tour and go see the Salvador Dali exhibit in the museum here.   Sounds like a pretty mellow day. :)

Bruges - Day 1

Today was a travel day, leaving Amsterdam and heading for Bruges in Belgium. After all the walking I'd been doing in Amsterdam, it was nice to have an excuse to kick my feet up for a few hours and just relax, as the plan was to do a lot more walking in Bruges as well.

I got in to the station after pretty much everything there had shut down so it took a few minutes to look around outside the train station before figuring how which way I had to go to get to my hotel.  No Taxi's were around but I knew it wasn't too far of a walk so away I went, dragging my luggage down narrow cobblestone roads with no one around.... was weird to see the city had pretty much closed up by 8:30 at night, but kind of cool to see all the old buildings with no traffic coming or going.

I found the hotel pretty easy and once again, found myself looking at getting my luggage up a narrow and fairly steep staircase, no elevators of course. The room was really nice though, and maybe one of the nicest of my trip so far. Of course, it did have a few quirks... like the toilet is literally in a closet. Here are some pics just for fun.

Since I'd been sitting most of the day and it was still early, I grabbed my camera and a map from the front desk and decided to see what I could tonight, hopefully getting some good shots of the cool old buildings here, without too many people around.

I headed for main square wanting to see the Bell Tower first and foremost and to try to find the one iconic spot where the most famous photos of Bruges are
taken.  I figured if nothing else, I could find my way there so that I could get back there nice and easy tomorrow when I had the whole day to explore and shoot.

Here are a few more shots from my wanderings tonight...  This is a great city and I love how old and medieval it all feels. I'm really looking forward to getting out again tomorrow to see as much of the city as I could fit in

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