Given a half-day of work and a connection through the French Heritage Society to stay at a chateau an hour away, Melissa and I decided to head to Brugge from July 1st to 3rd. You might be saying, 'Brugge... where the hell is that?'
Brugge is located Belgium. It is one of the most well preserved medieval towns in all of Europe. It became a city around 1100AD and still has much of the old infrastructure including part of the city wall. It's nickname is the 'Venice of the North,' due to its many canals. I guess a lot of painters came from there and there were many characteristic crafts, like lacework and brewing, that were still a prominent part of the cities economy.
The other side of the Brugge experience has something to do with this quote from the movie 'In Brugge,' 'If you grew up on a farm, and were stupid, you would like Brugge.' The city is awash with waffle-eating, english-speaking, chocolate scrounging tourists. Brugge, in all its fairytale-land glory is a tourist sink.
The best way to avoid the crowds in this small city is to go out at night when the city has been evacuated. There are swans swimming in the light up canals and wandering the empty medieval streets transports you back in history. During the day, the fish market is really interesting. The vendors there produce some exceptional handicrafts and are open to talking about their work and what they think of the tourists in their city. We found some amazing pottery made by a man at the market who made his own glazes and offered us a spot in his studio. We sampled moules and frites, a Brugge specialty best had with amazingly good (and cheap) Belgium beer. Although I wouldn't want to eat this every day, it was a great meal.
The best way to avoid the crowds in this small city is to go out at night when the city has been evacuated. There are swans swimming in the light up canals and wandering the empty medieval streets transports you back in history. During the day, the fish market is really interesting. The vendors there produce some exceptional handicrafts and are open to talking about their work and what they think of the tourists in their city. We found some amazing pottery made by a man at the market who made his own glazes and offered us a spot in his studio. We sampled moules and frites, a Brugge specialty best had with amazingly good (and cheap) Belgium beer. Although I wouldn't want to eat this every day, it was a great meal.
We spent much of Sunday in Brussels before catching our train back to Paris. Brussels holds the headquarters of the European Union and NATO. We didn't see too much of that, instead focusing our attention to, well, wandering. Here's what we found...
