Bastille Day cont'd

Crossing the border into Belgium today was not a good feeling. I (Dan) am not happy to have to leave. Oh well. C'est le fromage.
Here's our salute to France on Bastille Day: Click here to listen.
(I used to give extra credit to any student who was willing to sing the first verse of this in front of the class. Not many took me up on it. I'd buy those that did a good Belgian beer if they could still do it!)

Bruges (also called Brugge) is nice, as non-French places go. Nice squares and lots of cafes, wonderful shops, and vendors selling waffles with little lumps of pearl sugar in them. Hot off the griddle into my waiting hands. Pretty awesome. This is also the place with a chocolate museum, a lace museum, and another dedicated to frites. That's right; a French fry museum. Works for me. From Vicki: Here's the real problem: neither Dan nor I understand Dutch, which is the primary language spoken here (Wikipedia calls it Belgian Dutch), and we can't pronounce any of the street names. We can't even pronounce the name of our B&B. However, most people here seem to speak English, which is convenient. Now if only they would rename their streets and write their road signs in English... Geez, I'm sounding like Newt Gingrich.
Off the market square is an old belfry, dating back to the 1400s or so. These people love their bells and you can count on hearing them often.




These two were playing classical music for tips in front of the belfry. However, they were playing from music that had to be pinned with clothespins to the music stand, which made for lots of interruptions.




This is the Burg, or town hall, which had figures all over the front, but...




...none of gold like this one over the entrance to a church, which supposedly has a vial of Christ's blood. From Vicki: they probably got that idea from Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton.




We then did the touristy thing and took a packed boat through some of the canals. We could not understand the "captain" or the tape, but did understand the sign at the end that said "tipping is not a town in China." Very subtle.




Lots of people were aiming cameras our way, so I returned the favor.








This is a wall (in a place called The Beer Wall) of every beer made in Belgium. It's a very long wall. The French have their many cheeses; Belgians have beer.




Just a photo indicating the weather. Pretty overcast most of the time and it often sprinkled. Still, all in all, the weather was pretty good and we were able to do most of what we had planned.




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