Bruges: bits and pieces

Some of the best parts of traveling are the odd, unexpected things that you stumble upon while walking.

We did a lot of that.

Because Bruges used to be a walled city, it is still surrounded by a "ring road" with a surrounding canal. The area around it is filled with either green space, medieval city gates, or windmills. There are occasional modern roads - although the city itself doesn't have a lot of traffic - and on the other side of the ring, you can see the unfortunate architecture that Bruges' building code does not allow.

The vehicles pictured here tickled me. The beer delivery bike, the other delivery vehicle with the (very real) dog inspecting it from inside, the former bike-now-serving-area. 

And the trees. The bizarre, pollarded trees. I know that once the leaves come in, they'll look fine, if a bit geometric, and that it's a pruning style that controls growtht, but all I want to say whenever I see one of them is, "Who hurt you?"

Nothing you'd see back home, which is what I want to see when I'm away.

On the streets of Bruges

Because the forecast was cold and rainy, I had to pack more sweaters than I normally would have. Last year in Paris at thsi same time, I was wandering around withoutt a jacket. This year, sweaters and my winter coat.

So I couldn't bring as many goodies home as I would normally have done, but that's oaky. Photos are my favorite souvenirs anyway.

Not that I let it stop me from window shopping. Bruges has lovely shops, and because they have a lot of gray and rainy weather before the spring breaks through, they have a whimsical way of decorating the exteriors of businesses with fake flowers. It's totally ridiculous and charming and made me smile.

Also quite a few of the shop windows did the same. Being in a chocolate town right before Easter meant that the chocolatier's windows were top-tier. I tried to get as many of them as I could.

There and back again

Silly question

So I got the all-clear from the eye doctor and we left for Bruges. Because of everything that's been going on (if you're in the US, you know), we got to the airport even earlier than usual.

Once upon a time I ran through airports to catch flights like OJ Simpson in those old commercials, but now... we got there at 3:15 for a 7:35 p.m. flight. The only problem was, British Airways didn't open their checkin until 4:00. So we waited in line for 45 minutes, checked in, and then waited in the security line for another 30ish. 

Honestly we were expecting so much worse. The TSA workers who were there were moving, and the other agents who were there for whatever reason were just standing around, watching people or eating, not actutally providing any assistance.

Our room, right off the
market square

We got through in plenty of time to go to a bar near our gate. When I ordered wine, the bartender asked, "Small or large?"

Silly question.

Flight was uneventful, we made our connection in London, landed in Brussels (a town I will never, ever like), and took the train straight to Bruges. Basically from arrival to the airport to arrival in Bruges was 16 straight hours of travel, nad it was more than enough. Once we checked into our hotel, we went face down on the bed for about 90 minutes (thankfully it was prettty early), then got up, cleaned up, and went out in search of food and scenery, all of which you can find there in abundance.

View from the room

It was a great week, despite the weather, which hovered between 37 and 50 degrees, with rain every single day. Not constant, but often enough that I couldn't leave without an umbrella. Or a sweater.

I'm going to spread my vacation posts out ta bit, both because things are a little busy at the moment and I feel bad about not posting for a bit, and because I don't want to do one huge photo dump with attached description; the trip deserves more than that.

Market square with tower; our
hotel would have been to the right 
and down a small street