Saturday was our bonus day, but we had lots we still wanted to see. After breakfast we re-traced our steps of Friday to a point and then took off for parts yet to be discovered. We started out by one of the canals again. Brugge is called "Venice of the North" because of the many canals that flow through the city.
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| This picture is in the same spot, but captures the cute arched bridge on the left. |
Many buildings in Europe will have the date of their construction on the front of them somewhere. Sometimes the numerals are painted, sometimes they are etched in stone, and sometimes they are made from another material and adhered to the building. We ran across many examples in Brugge. Here is one of the more interesting ones (and one of the more obvious ones):
The trim around the windows and the numberals almost look like white frosting on a gingerbread house!
Next stop, The Church of Our Lady----but wait, it's under major renovation. This is what it looked like all wrapped in scaffolding and plastic:
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| The building of this church was begun in the 13th century. |
I got a few miscellaneous shots from the outside:
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Loved the windows on this part.
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What I believe to be a perfect example of a "flying buttress"---one of the few things I remember from Humanities 101, BYU circa 1972 (maybe).
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The real treasure of The Church of Our Lady isn't so much what's on the outside. It's what's on the inside that counts (and we didn't get to see it because of the construction):
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| Right there in the middle, none other than Michelangelo's Madonna with Child. Purchased in Italy by a Brugge native, it was donated to his parish church in 1506. This sculpture was the only one to leave Italy during Michelangelo's lifetime. (Thanks to Wikipedia for the picture.) |
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This man playing the steel drums was one of several musicians we saw in our travels. Violin and accordian were other instruments of choice.
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| This is the gate to a convent. Once inside you were asked to be silent (signs). It's hard to see, but 1776 is in relief on the upper part of the gate. |
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| In the middle of all the buildings was this clearing, full of grass and trees with daffodils starting to bloom. Occasionally, you would see a crocus. |
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| DJ in front of the church within the convent walls. I only wish I would have gotten a picture of the cute little nun that walked by. |
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| Before you turn to go across the bridge to the convent, this fountain stands in the middle of the road. |
Loved this arch. I got a shot from one side, and DJ got a shot from the other:
There were areas along the canals where swans congregated. Austria's Emperor Maximilian's right-hand man, nicknamed Long Neck whose coat of arms was decorated with a swan, was killed by the people of Brugge during a revolt against Maximilian. Maximilian was so outraged that he punished the people of Brugge symbolically. "He obliged the council to keep swans on Brugge's canals so that they would never forget the cruel murder of Pieter Lanckhals." All I can say is that they swans are beautiful!
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| I took this picture because of the architecture. |
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| Then I realized it was built over the canal, and the water ran under it's foundation. |
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| Can you just say, gorgeous! |
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| Ditto! |
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St Salvadors Cathedral
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| A statue of one of Brugge's most famous natives, Simon Stevin. A great intellectual, Stevin was a mathematician, an engineer, an architect. a scientist, and an inventor. He is most famous for coming up with the decimal point! |
By this time, we were ready for a late lunch, so we tried out another restaurant on Market Square:
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| It was such a nice day we ate outside! |
After a quick rest back at the hotel, we were ready to hit the pavement again. This time we wanted to walk to the outside of town to get a picture of the city gate we had come through when we drove into town and pictures of the windmills as well. It was a pretty long walk, but great exercise to wear off more of those calories from all the great food!
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| This is the inside of the city gate that we drove through to come into town. |
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| This is the outside of the gate. Obviously, this is one-way, and you get out of town on another road! |
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| The bridge out in front of the gate is a draw bridge. We saw it raised up to let a full-blown barge through to travel further down the canal! We missed getting a shot of it. |
Next, we were off on a hike to see the windmills along the city wall and the outer canal. There were four that we wanted to see. We were a little disappointed (they weren't your typical Dutch windmill---you know the ones in the storybooks), but interesting anyway.
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| Second view of Windmill #1 |
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Windmill #2 - See what I mean? Kinda ugly, huh?
Windmill #3
You get an idea of how big they are with DJ standing next to the base. |
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| Windmill #4 |
We headed around the circle and back down into the old part of town. I accidentally lost a few pictures that I took when I was getting rid of some "bad" photos. I don't know what I pushed; but, we have a few more from the time that we walked (limped) backed to the hotel. DJ guessed that we had walked 5-10 miles that day, and we were feeling it by dinner time.
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| Entrance to what is now used as an Episcopalian seminary. |
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| A random church |
We were so ready to take it easy. We stayed at our hotel for dinner, watched a movie, and hit the sack. We hated the thoughts of leaving the next morning; but as they say, "All good things must come to an end."
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