NO, I can't ay that For anyone who has seen the movie Bruges, you know what I was going to say.
More about Bruges later though.
I woke up his morning at 2:00 am and never did go back to sleep so I ended up going down to breakfast around 6 and I wasn't surprised to be the only one there. I've already mentioned the quirkiness of this hotel...I've never seen anything like it. It kind of reminds me of the Winchester Mystery House in California but it is one of the most interesting and charming hotels I've ever stayed at. Our room is pretty large by European standards and the bathroom is enormous, almost as big as the room itself. The toilet sits up high and only my tiptoes touch the floor. I think Sarah needs a stepstool to get up and down, ha, ha.
Anyway the breakfast is included in the price and it's a very good one indeed. They have a machine that is loaded with whole oranges and it runs periodically to produce fresh squeezed orange juice. It adds a delicous brightness to the day to be able to drink something so fresh. They also have little containers of different (wonderful) cheeses and did I mention the freshly baked breads and pastries. NOT a bad way to start out the day. Especially since it doesn't even start to get light til after 8:30.
Everytime I travel to other countries I'm amazed about how good the food is and how different it is from most of the dining out we do in Salem. Don't get me wrong, there are some very good restaurants, especially in Portland, that I love going to...but it just seems like the overall quality and effort of serving food here is better. I read somewhere recently that the only places that Europe can't import meat from is England and the United States. I don't know whether it's true or not...apparently because of the hormones that our animals are fed and injected with...but it makes sense. Anway, guess this is just food for thought (no pun intended.)
Anyway, back to Bruges.
We left on the 10:21 am train and after changing trains in Brussels, pulled into Bruges about 12:30. It was raining hard there and even though it was mid-day, it was very dark. We took a bus to the "centrum" and tried to get adjusted to yet a different language. Claire says that there are actually three languages spoken in Belgium, French, Flemish and German. It does tend to keep one on one's toes though. Namur is in the french speaking region, Bruges in the Flemish area and so on, but here's the kicker....Brussels is in the Flemish region too but just to confuse things they speak French there. Go figure.
Bruges is quite simply a beautiful, fairytale-like town although a little hard to tell through the pouring rain, bone numbing coldness and the thousands (yes, thousands of tourists). After being in Namur for several days where not too many tourists go (Claire's friend Kamil didn't even know there were any hotels in Namur until we told him) it was a little bit of culture shock to be somewhere that was hard to walk down the streets because of all the people. It was kind of like being in Venice but without the heat.
Anyway we were hungry and it being about 1 by this time, many of the restaurants were busy. We ended up at an Indian restaurant....had a nice table upstairs with an amazing view and enjoyed a long, leisurely, warm lunch. Again...the food was so darn good.
After lunch we spent a couple of hours just milling around, getting wet and did I mention how cold it is?
At one point when we were standing in the main square I said to Claire, "I wonder where the bell tower is?"....the bell tower being a major landmark in Bruges. It turned out that we were standing right in front of it..guess I couldn't see past the umbrella.
Even though Bruges is in Belgium and not far from Namur the architecture is strikingly different. More germanic or northern european where Namur is a mixture of that and french provincial.
We took a late afternoon train back and when we got back to Namur it was raining even harder here. We decided to go to a restaurant we'd already been to for dinner and had a nice time talking over the events of the day and relaxing back in our nice, quiet, cosy Namur.
Sarah took off back to the hotel on her own while I walked Claire partway to the bus station. I enjoyed my alone time walking back to the hotel (after four hours on a train w/ Claire and Sarah, one can go quietly insane...he, he, Yes, they do tend to get a little silly for hours on end.)
Anyway on the way back to the hotel I felt proud of us all for not letting the weather get in the way of being out and about and having a good time. Our spirits are high and we're enjoying being together and more than up to the challenge of the weather.
Tomorrow we go to Dinant (which is a few miles down the river) with Claire's host family. Dinant has some beautiful scenery, a wonderful old cathedral , a citadel 350 feet up on the cliff and was also the birthplace and home of Aldolfe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone.
Should be another fun day.
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