In Bruges

Today was the first whole day of our trip. Getting here was long and arduous and we were half dead when we arrived. But we made it. We spent the day getting lost in Bruges. We both have mixed feelings about Bruges. More often than not we found ourselves in varying stages of "lostness" but in no way were these directionally-challenged times a result of our doing. . . honest, those medieval street planners were the worst. . .

We started the day by walking in the rain to the outer canal and seeing some windmills. If you've ever seen the windmill in Lynden then get that windmill out of your head because it can--at best--approximate the size of these things.

After we wandered around the windmills we headed to Burg Square where the Basilica of the Holy Blood is. The basilica was built in the early 12th century and started out as a private double chapel for the residence of the Count of Flanders. The apocryphal story behind the most famous item within the basilica is that  less than a decade after the chapel was built the then count of Flanders, Thierry of Alsace, left for the crusades and returned three years later with around 11 drops of Jesus' blood which has been housed in the basilica ever since.

Burg Square

Basilica of the Holy Blood

Inside the basilica

the relic is kept inside the silver tabernacle

Next, we headed over to the Market Square which was jammed packed with people and a big market. We then hiked up the 366 steps of the tower to the belfry.

view from the top of the tower

the tower at night

We took a rather uninformative canal boat tour but it was still enjoyable. It was nice to sit for a while! We ended our day with dinner at Herberg Vlissinghe, which is the oldest pub in the town. We ended up sitting by a small group of older people and we struck up a conversation with the guy and gal sitting closest to us. They were from various parts of the UK and were on holiday in Belgium. The guy I was sitting next to had biked through part of Germany and had been to the part of the Rhine that we'll be in next week. We talked about England and the places that we had been there. It turns out, the couple we were sitting next to had even been to Seattle! Small world. We had a really fun time chatting.

After dinner we decided to go another short walk because I wanted to take this picture:

And now, since it's late and we need to get to sleep, I will leave you with my favorite picture of the day. Obviously we win at selfies!

Tomorrow we are off to Ghent!

Libby