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<\/a><\/p>\nIt was also the setting for an extremely violent comedy starring Colin Firth. We did not encounter any gunfire, fortunately.<\/p>\n
What we did encounter was tourists \u2013 lots and lots of tourists.\u00a0 To be fair, WE were tourists, so it\u2019s not as though we weren\u2019t part of the problem. But it\u2019s frustrating, because Leigh has been encouraging me to go to Bruges for as long as we\u2019ve been married \u2013 she has very fond memories of trips there in the \u201890s.<\/p>\n
And I can see why; the city IS beautiful.\u00a0 But it also has a lot of McDonalds and Starbucks and Instagrammers, just like everywhere else in the world at this point.\u00a0 Too many people wanting to see not enough stuff, I guess.<\/p>\n But with that discussion out of the way, let\u2019s find out about the stuff I personally got to see.\u00a0 To start with, the architecture really is just impossibly picturesque.\u00a0 The city was in a bit of an industrial depression during the World Wars, so it wasn\u2019t worth anyone\u2019s time to bomb it.\u00a0 As such, a lot more of it has survived more intact than in many comparably aged cities in this part of Europe.<\/p>\n We wandered around a bit just gawping at stuff, and then bought a ticket to climb up the bell tower.\u00a0 The entire time we were up there, a carillon recital was underway.\u00a0 This was good and bad.<\/p>\n Good, because I am actually a former carillonneur \u2013 I learned to play at Yale and continued to actively perform in Cleveland until I moved to Michigan. Bad, because those suckers are LOUD \u2013 the best place to hear a carillon concert is emphatically NOT six feet from the bells. Still, the performer was excellent, and he played a range of pieces, from traditional Dutch carillon preludes all the way up to \u201cRing of Fire.\u201d<\/p>\n The view was pretty nice too.<\/p>\n On returning to ground level, we found a nice little caf\u00e9 a bit away from the tourist center to have lunch, and then headed back into the madding throng to do the other traditional activity in Bruges, a tour of the canals.<\/p>\n Bruges has many canals earning it the (possibly self-issued) nickname \u201cThe Venice of Belgium.\u201d\u00a0 But while the canal boat tour COULD have been a total tourist gimmick, it really wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n For starters, Bruges is just as pretty from the water as from land, if not more so.<\/p>\n Secondly, our tour guide\u2019s ability to code switch was worth the price of admission all by itself \u2013 he gave detailed, high speed information in German, Dutch, English, and French, and it sure seemed to this monolingual tourist that all four languages were just as fluent and ready to hand as his English.<\/p>\n After a waffle break (this IS Belgium, after all), we headed back to the car to start the trip back to Nivelles.\u00a0 But we had another stop on the way: Ghent!<\/p>\n Ghent is another city with an interesting medieval center, although it seems a bit more integrated into the modern city around it.<\/p>\n We were there late enough that it wasn\u2019t really worth paying for admission to the castle, but we had a nice walk around looking at it and some other medieval structures.<\/p>\n We also saw the graffiti street, which is a LOT more fun than the gum wall in Seattle.<\/p>\n Finally we made our way to the 10th<\/sup> century cathedral of Saint Bavo, which was architecturally amazing, and had a choral concert underway to boot.<\/p>\n After that long day we headed back to Nivelles, where I got a nice simple dinner from the grocery store across the street and crashed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For my first Saturday in Belgium, I went to Bruges with my coworker Dan and his parents, who had flown to Europe for a bit of a family vacation with Dan. Belgium is divided into two halves, the Dutch speaking … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n