Bruges or Brugge?

Society grows great when old people plant trees, the shade they know they will never sit under. Good people do things for other people. That is what makes a great society.

February has turned out to be a busy month. We decided it was time to see a little part of Europe, Bruges. Robert, Lauren, Michael, Matilda, Susan and I for three nights. 

Bruges or Brugge? - Overview

Bruges, the capital of West Flanders in northwest Belgium, is distinguished by its canals, cobbled streets and medieval buildings. In the city center’s Burg square, the 14th-century Stadhuis (City Hall) has an ornate carved ceiling. Nearby, Markt square features a 13th-century belfry with a 47-bell carillon and 83m tower with panoramic views. Brugge is taken from the old Dutch for bridge (Brugga)

We travelled by car and Robert and Lauren took the Eurostar from Nottingham via London to Brussels and then down to Bruges. We left Poole at 16:00, travelled through France and arrived in Bruges, Belgium, 7 hours later. We also went under the sea for a while, that car of mine is amazing after such a crazy trip. Well, I say crazy, our trip across, or should I say, under the channel, was booked for 7:30 pm. We left Poole at 4 pm, and we had forgotten that it was the start of the mid-term break for all the children. Traffic calming was the order of the day. 

We finally arrived at the Eurotunnel at 8 pm, offering some lame excuse that there was an accident on the M25, Matilda did warn us, "They will not wait for you." The man at the first checkpoint was very understanding and said he would put us on the next train. The second checkpoint was UK Border Control, a quick scan of our passports, a brief second look at Matilda’s and then waved us through for a vehicle check. I am pleased to say the Golf behaved with dignity and we were waved to the next checkpoint. French Border Control, an angry-looking Frenchman at the end of his shift, did not even have a second look at Matilda and waved us through. Now we were almost on board, Matilda’s comment that they will not wait for you was uppermost in our minds. We dutifully stuck the UK sticker to the back of the car and waited. 

Finally, we were directed on and we were the very last car on the train. The trip over was pleasant, actually a little strange as we were enclosed in a train and there was no view worth talking about other than a concrete wall whistling by at 70 mph. The tunnel is actually 50.5 km long and we were roughly 150 ft under the seabed, making it the third longest tunnel in the world,  but it is the longest undersea tunnel. All lost to us as it was all over in 35 minutes and we were travelling on the right side of the beautiful smooth French motorway. The UK should take a leaf out of the French roads, wide, no road works and smooth. Potholes, the French do not do potholes, actually there is no French word for potholes. More on Potholes later.

Michael and I found a very clever feature in my car. Being a UK car, it has a mph speedometer, we were in France and they do kmh. In the car setting, we changed it to display in km, the speedometer and the distance. Clever bit of kit that. 

Saturday 

Size of the cathedrals and towers, all built before time began. Firstly, they speak Dutch in Belgium, they are all genuinely friendly, and all the shops, cafes and museums are sparsely staffed, but you never seem to wait for service. The other thing Michael and I noticed was the absence of plump people, they obviously have a healthy diet and do a fair amount of walking. 

On the subject of walking, Susan walked 12 km the first day, I did about 9. Wandered around the labyrinth of cobbled streets and squares. Be prepared to walk as everything is in the old town and nothing is where you thought it was. As the inner city was built many years ago, the roads are all cobbled stone and there is no logic to any of it. We did find ourselves walking in circles and seeing new places that we had walked past on the other side of the road. Funny thing, walking in a place with so many old buildings, the side of the road you are walking on, you only notice the shop windows, the vast majority being chocolate shops. To be fair, we did see some really high-end shops with prices to match. One comes to mind, a box of matches is 75p at Tesco,  at one of these high-end shops we noticed them for 12 euros, they did come in a rather fancy box. 

Back to our trip to Bruges, or is it Brugge? Bruges is in the Flemish part of Belgium, where people speak Dutch. Bruges is called Brugge in Dutch. But the Dutch “g” doesn't exist in French or English. So the city is called Bruges in French and English. We will call it Bruges, this is an English blog. 

Our Airbnb was good, open plan lounge/dining/kitchen with the three bedrooms above over two stories. The stairs remind me of climbing into our loft at home, very steep and shallow, seems a thing in the EU, Italy was the same. Well equipped and comfortable. Being in Belgium, the owner of the Airbnb had many rules to abide by and we did give them the time they deserved. 

We took the car into the town the first morning, sunny skies and very little wind, although the air temperature was a sobering 2 degrees C. I wanted to see the Chocolate museum and by the time we did we found it we were all hungry and you know what it’s like when all you want is food, Matilda and Robert started getting grumpy, so we decided to skip the Chocolate Museum and find a place to take six of us for brunch. That turned out to be at Vero Caffe, good coffee, good food, was just what we needed. 

Bruges is made up of two parts, the old city or inner city and the outer, where most people live and go about their daily lives. The old city is expensive but has so much to offer the humble tourists. As I said earlier, you will be walking for most of your day, really the only way to see this historic city dating back 700 years. Bruges has so much history, it is overwhelming and to do it justice you would need a week to investigate all those museums, palaces and churches. I was happy to see the outsides and just enjoy spending time with our boys and their partners. Many a snack was tried, Belgium beer was sampled and chocolate, never enough chocolate. Waffles are another talking point and there was no shortage of places to buy waffles of all flavours and sizes, we did, very tasty, but quite rich. Susan and Lauren hit the mulled wine early on and seemed to enjoy it, but I settled for a coffee. Being on a city holiday is more about sightseeing, marvelling at the magnificent architecture from many years ago and eating foreign food in quaint little street cafes. 

The Markt Square mentioned in the overview features a 13th-century belfry with a 47-bell carillon and 83m tower with panoramic views. Lauren climbed to the top and saw the bells on our behalf. Robert and I do not do heights and the rest were too lazy to climb the 365 steps to the top. (See gallery)

A camera is a save button for the mind’s eye.

Everyone seems to agree, the best part was taking the boat trip through the city. Yes, this is something like Venice, water everywhere. The buildings are old and famous, too much to take in, but awesome when there. There was a moment when things could have gone badly, a touch and go situation. Susan made a paper plane and threw it at Matilda, who was doing what Matilda does best, sleeping on the couch because of her condition. What condition, you have every right to ask, I do not know, but it could be something she picked up from her trip to Europe. Anyway, back to the paper plane crossing the room at speed, hitting Matilda on the head, she immediately thought it was Robert and threw some rolled up paper at him, hitting him in the face. Just to be clear, Robert had nothing to do with the whole affair and was immersed in the game they were playing. Robert, being Robert, picked up the first thing to hand, a pillow, which he threw at Matilda, hitting her square in the face. Tempers running high and anything could happen next but Matilda held back a retaliation and started to giggle uncontrollably, so much so that before long we were all laughing. I must commend Lauren and Michael’s restraint, although it did happen very quickly and Susan almost wet herself laughing.

The Church of Our Lady was my favourite. The 115.5 metre-high brick church tower, the second tallest in the world, was built by great builders from Bruges. Inside you can find a wealth of art treasures, with Michelangelo’s world-famous Madonna and Child the centre piece. The church interior contains famous paintings from the 13th and 14th century and the 15th and  16th century, the tombs of Mary of Burgundy and Charles the Bold. 

We did the normal tourist stuff, coffee and pastries, waffles and chocolates, pizza and antipasto, artisan bread and Belgium beer. Bought a couple of bottles of Merlot wine and cheese. Did you know that Merlot is French for “the little blackbird.” Merlot also refers to a red grape variety used to make wine around the world.

Two and a half days in Bruges flew by and after saying goodbye to Robert and Lauren, who were moving on to Brussels to take the train to London, we made our way to Dunkirk in France, for a quick look at where the allied forces landed on D-Day. Lovely, big open beach and the Burger King burgers filled a hole. There was a museum celebrating D-Day and it did look interesting, but we had a Euro Tunnel train to catch and as Matilda quite rightly pointed out, they will not wait for you. To end, Michael was the star on the trip, ferrying people around and organising food, rest points and witty banter, even kept Matilda happy. That boy does like travelling, he is off on a skiing trip for a week, in two weeks time. I do wonder when he has time for work?

Great weekend away, loads of fun, laughter and Bruges is a beautiful place to visit.

Birthdays. Happy times, this month it is Michael’s, Russell’s, Daniel's and Mika Mouse. I really do hope you had, have, a great day, they do come around so quickly. Ages vary, but in sequence, 31, 70, 19 and 23, correct me if I am wrong or not. No plants were harmed in the making of this blog.

Potholes

The UK has a specialist department for potholes. When a pothole is detected, a pothole engineer travels to said pothole and fills out a report, this is sent to his immediate supervisor, he/she/them evaluates the severity of the pothole with an advanced pothole measurement analysis, if severe enough, it will be escalated to the regional committee. They will immediately decide to send it to the national committee for potholes and road hazards. All very educated individuals, doing a host of calculations and risk assessments before shelving it until the next budget report comes out. Result, pothole gets worse. In some cases, it will be sent to the Secretary of State for Transport.  Now this is where it gets just plain stupid. The Secretary of State for Transport,  Heidi Alexander, has a BA in European Regional Change, thus no experience in road maintenance. Seriously, I am not even trying to make this up, it writes itself.