Amsterdam to Antwerp

In an effort to not make you scroll forever while reading, I’m making many images smaller in this post, click them for larger. (It doesn’t help, you’re still going to scroll forever.)

Day 5

We started the day by going to the local bakery across the street from Tharash’s apartment for a loaf of fresh bread. It was very popular in there, people lining up out the door to get their bread and buns and pastries, and smelled amazing. Then we went to the grocery store for cheese and cucumber, and I also requested some crackers as a snack. This was when I discovered that Tuc makes crackers that aren’t just plain salted crackers, so I got bacon crackers omg. They do use real bacon so they’re no good for vegetarians, and they are very salty. I loved them so I was sparing with them and they actually lasted until I got home again since I didn’t eat one every day. (My local Dutch import store sells paprika-flavoured ones!)

We took the same route to get to Antwerp’s central train station as we had done to get to the old town, and on the subway we met a very loud friendly middle-aged man who had been drinking, who wanted to know where we were from, where we were going, and if we were married lol. He told us about meeting his wife, who was with him, and how they married like 6 months after meeting.

Anyway, Antwerp Centraal is absolutely majestic, and I believe it when I’m told that it’s a tourist destination in its own right. We had to wait for a bit for our train, but that was no bother in such an interesting place. It’s like a cathedral to steam power (the high ceiling is both stylish and practical! at least for an obsolete technology), but modern renovations have placed the train tracks at three separate levels instead of all on the same level. I’m not sure if that’s to fit in more platforms or just to be extremely cool. The engineering to make all those tunnels work must be crazy. Apparently the street outside was lined with diamond jewellers, though that’s not something I care about.

On the train, I read the Nijntje book about snow, with much assistance from the native speaker, and we turned our bread and cucumber and cheese into sandwiches. We caught glimpses of the old town in Ghent from a distance as we passed through, but that will be a city for another trip. At the Bruges train station tourist info office, we bought a guidebook with four walking tours outlined in it, with information on the buildings and sights along the route. Though Tharash accidentally bought it in Dutch so I couldn’t read it very well.

Setting foot in the old city brought an instantaneous change. Most of the buildings are a mix of styles from early Renaissance all the way up to 20th century (though those are quite rare in the town centre) but enough of the big important buildings are from the medieval or Renaissance period that the general vibe you get is of stepping back four or five hundred years. We had to cross almost the entirety of the old town to reach our hotel, which was a historic building itself on the edge of a canal. It might have taken us 20 minutes if we went straight there, but it took nearly twice that because even with luggage (and my backpack is not well-designed, it turns nearly spherical when it’s full which puts a lot of pressure on my back and it doesn’t have a chest strap so it pulls on my shoulders), we kept meandering to look at interesting things. Not too much, but we are easily distractible people who prefer not to have a firm holiday schedule for this reason.

The hotel had an interesting approach to keys… each room key had a giant metal fob with a red tassel, and if you lost your key it would be a €150 charge; they had 24-hour front desk service, and the front desk would hold onto your key while you were out and about. I wasn’t really a fan of the tub in the room, though I’ll give it credit for not being a tiny square, but the mechanism for keeping the water inside when running a shower was a clear piece of [plexiglass?] fastened in place and I felt it was rather restrictive unlike a shower curtain. It was awkward to get in and out around it with the sloped roof ceiling and historic wooden beams so close. The AC in the bedroom was quite strong, and there was a minifridge which was so full of products to buy that we had to take some out in order to store our cucumber and cheese. But the tea and hot chocolate were free so that’s nice.

We relaxed for a bit in the hotel and had a look at the walking book, planning where to go for the rest of the day and for dinner. I changed into something nicer, though it was a bit too windy and cloudy for it (I had a Marilyn Monroe moment, fortunately on a quiet street where nobody was really around). On our walk, we saw signs at Sint-Janshospitaal for a world harp concert listed as “tonight!” but when we returned at the appointed time there was nothing there; we and another interested passerby figured out that the “tonight!” sign was incorrect and that another sign listed the concerts as Thursday-Saturday and the current day was Sunday. Oh well!

We bought Museum cards from a machine in the Belfry, which were a bit pricey at €33 each, but they were good for 72 hours and would let us visit any of the museums any number of times. When we were in Oslo, we had gotten good use out of the Oslo Museum card, so we hoped we would again though we were only in Bruges less than two days all told.

I took a video at this location to show the clouds scuddering across the sky.

On the other side of the bridge is an art installation of a modern sculpture of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We had fun identifying the figures, and because we’re Terry Pratchett fans, we said hi specifically to Death and his horse Binky. : D

For dinner we didn’t want to do anything fancy, so we went to a tiny street food store that did Greek food, and we each got a pita wrap, and Tharash also wanted to try their ‘fries with Lesvos cheese’, and we got a little chocolate tart which we took home with us because that was a lot of food already. The wraps had fries inside them! The prices were a bit more expensive then were listed on the website, but they were so good. The Lesvos cheese was okay but I didn’t like it that much. We sat in the main square near the statue to eat. Sorry no pictures, our hands were full.

Back at the hotel we chatted a bit with our friend Maggie, and ate the tart with tea, and I counted the mosquito bites I had gotten while I was at Tharash’s house (which is near a swamp). I got a few more in Bruges as well; the hotel warned us to keep the windows closed as mosquitoes could come up from the canal, but one must have gotten in anyway. I still have scabs from them. : P

Day 6

Woke up way too early because of light behind the curtains. They weren’t bad curtains, but they could have been better. Tharash was awake early as well so we just chatted until it was a decent hour to go find breakfast. We stopped in a bookshop on the way, but I found it a little expensive and I already had two childrens’ books now (Tharash gave me a second one, Pluk van de Petteflet).

So we just went to Le Pain Quotidien and had a lot of really great breads. I had Le Pain Quotidien Breakfast and Tharash had the Baker’s Bread Basket, but they just lumped all our breads into one basket. The nice thing about the Breakfast was it came with a juice and a hot drink, so I had orange juice and gave the tea to Tharash. They had butter and three spreads – strawberry jam, four-berry jam, and speculoos, which is basically spice cookies in spreadable form omg. (I can get it from the Dutch import store!!) We couldn’t eat all the bread so we took it with us for lunch, and then went to visit the Cathedral.

The Cathedral’s incredibly old on the outside, you can fairly see the different stages of construction through the size and shape of the stones (see previous photo). Wikipedia says construction of the present building began in 1250, so… yeah, getting up to 800 years. (Or, as old as the trees in Cathedral Grove here on Vancouver Island >.>) But, not only was the Cathedral full of incredible historic tapestries and paintings and artefacts and stained glass windows, but an organist came to practice!!! She played a lot of French Romantic, but some Bach as well. I’m not certain of the specific pieces she played, and if any of them had loud endings she left those parts off. But that’s okay, I was thrilled to pieces just to hear something. I must have sat and listened for half an hour! After I had listened, we had a look at the Cathedral treasury, which contained sculptures and paintings and shiny monstrances.

Wobbly video tour of the back of the Cathedral, plus the organist practicing something gorgeous and French. I’m not sure if it’s polite/ethical to have recorded it, tbh. (I took 5 more videos for my personal enjoyment that I’m not posting for that reason >.>) (also lol I didn’t realize the info signs would be so illegible in the video)

After that, we walked over a couple streets and went to the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, which has been set up more as a museum. There’s still a bit in the middle to do church things, but the vast majority of the outside has been taken over for showing off middle-ages art and architecture, and many things were explained with some very nice spinnable multi-lingual signs. There were a bunch of stone sarcophagi which were painted inside, and the signs said that the painters had to work fast. You can see a 3D scan of a recent discovery here! The Church also had a sculpture by Michelangelo, and it was set up with great magnificence; it was probably the only one of his statues to leave Italy in his lifetime, according to the sign. You can really tell the difference between his style, and the style of the sculptor(s) who did the rest of its surroundings.

We walked further south, sort of following another of the self-guided walking tours. On the way I couldn’t help myself and stepped into one of the many lace gift stores (Bruges is apparently known for their lace production!); I got a few things as gifts, but also a little butterfly pin for me. The pin part isn’t very good, I’ll probably remove it and apply the butterfly to something else. So we went past the hospital, and the place where the horse carriage tours wait to get started, and a canal bank reserved entirely for swans and geese, and to a béguinage (basically a convent for women who were not nuns) called the Begijnhof. There’s a sign at the gate asking for quiet please out of respect for the premises, but there was a tour guide rattling away in Spanish to his group as we came in. I know he has a tour to run but it felt a bit against the spirit of the thing. Anyway we came to the garden/park that follows the canal that rings the old city, and there we had lunch.

We wandered back up north after that, past a street where every other shop is either for chocolate or waffles (smelled so goooood), until we came back to the Gruuthusemuseum, and there we decided to take a boat tour because several people before the trip had advised us to do a boat tour. Tharash got a bit of a Craig vibe from the tour guide at first, but I didn’t? I just thought he was a gentle speaker. Apparently there used to be many convents around town, not to mention affordable housing for the less-well off, and breweries (still are some breweries). He told us a couple of the housing prices, and they seemed comparable to Victoria. He explained that the big bridge-tunnel under the Gruuthusemuseum is actually three bridges, built at separate times, and they each have a different arch.

 

After the boat tour, we went north to find the town hall, which we’d caught a glimpse of on the tour. To get there, we went through a shopping… hallway? through one of the buildings next to the Belfry. We stopped at a chocolate store to get some Belgian chocolate from the Fair Trade brand Sjokla, which is apparently specific to Bruges itself. (Website is in Dutch only, sorry) We bought three bars, two for our friend Khem and one for us, though we didn’t eat all of the one for us so I have it with me at home now. Though I do think it’s a bit disappointing that the Fair Trade chocolate comes in boring bar form and in ‘milk’ and ‘dark’ varieties, and the regular possibly-uses-slave-labour chocolate comes in shapes like X-box controllers and lipstick tubes as well as traditional truffles in all kinds of flavours. Fair Trade needs to take over the chocolate industry so I can have more fun chocolates!

The little tunnel hallway comes out right beside the Basilica of the Holy Blood, so first we went into the bottom chapel, which felt very medieval and austere, even a bit primitive (well it is from the 12th century). It was great, but no pictures because it was very dark. Then we went to the Town Hall museum next door, which had a grand hall upstairs covered in gorgeous paintings from the 19th century meant to emulate the medieval period, and they did a good job. It may not be original, but the ~*aesthetic*~ is top tier. The paintings tell stories from the history of Bruges. It’s also got a tiny musician’s balcony halfway up the wall.

In another room there was a big projected video over a 3D map of the region, showing the history of Bruges as it related to the sea. You picked up a set of headphones to listen to the audio, and you could stand anywhere around the map table. It was fascinating to see that in Roman times, the sea came inland through an inlet to approximately the spot where Bruges is, but then it left again, and then it came back in a different place. It must be so weird to be living on a land that is actually a colossal beach. The Zwin inlet eventually silted up, despite canals being dug, and so in the modern day Bruges built the port of Zeebrugge to be their port. But although the distance between Bruges’ old city and Zeebrugge is now carefully engineered and controlled, it’s so interesting to think that once upon a time the distance between them was a natural inlet, the banks of which had little towns to dock the trading ships. And you can see it from the top of the Belfry! Imagine what it looked like hundreds of years ago?

Anyway, then we went back to the Basilica to see the upper chapel, and you have to climb a really neat stair to get there. It was visually quite busy inside, and Wikipedia says it’s been renovated a few times. I did take a few pictures of the little organ inside, but it’s just a square of pipes so maybe not so visually interesting to you guys.

After this we were rather tired and went back to the hotel to have a rest and a cup of tea. Then we went back out to the Belfry, but we’d forgotten we needed to book a time slot to go up, so we did not go up – although I think they could have more signage as to how this can be done, I thought we would have to go inside to talk to a human to do it, but the attendant stopped us and directed us back to the machine we’d bought our Museum cards at. Tharash doesn’t think his behaviour was anything out of the ordinary, but I think he seemed annoyed at all these dumb tourists trying to get in, which makes me annoyed – if there was more information around explaining we weren’t supposed to go in, we wouldn’t have tried to go in! So we went and booked a time for early the next morning, after doing the math to make sure we’d still be able to make our train.

Anyway, we went to find dinner, at a place that served Belgian food in a sit-down restaurant at not-exorbitant prices. This was a little difficult, as the first couple places we tried had already closed their kitchens in favour of only serving beer. But eventually we found a place called Oud Brugge, where we indeed had two Belgian classics: I had chicken vol-au-vent (puff pastry pie) and Tharash had Vlaamse stooferij (Flemish beef stew to be served on top of fries). Tharash also had a beer of the same kind that was cooked into his beef stew. He explained Western Europe’s concept of tipping (commonly rounding up to the nearest euro, 10% if you loved it, but never more than that or it’s insulting), but then when I paid the bill I forgot to ask to round it up because I went on a bit of autopilot and I’m used to there being some external reminder to tip in North America. So I forgot, but Tharash said not to feel bad because it’s not weird to not tip like it would be in North America. Indeed there were times later on the trip when tipping did not happen and it didn’t feel weird, it made dining out into a simple transaction and… I’m okay with that? (The other thing is that servers won’t come bother you 20 times during your meal, which is nice except you have to wave them over if you want something, including the bill, which is a bit bothersome for an introvert like me.)

After we returned to the hotel, we took advantage of the 24-hour front desk-slash-bar services and had a local beer each. It wasn’t quite as entertaining since I was trying not to show just how drunk I was off one beer since we were ‘in public’, but they were… decent beers I guess? Belgium may be famed for their beers but I know nothing. (also a fruit fly drowned in mine halfway through.)

Day 7

There was a mosquito present in the room in the night, which led to me doing the uncomfortable self-preservation of hiding under the blankets as much as possible, and it seems in Europe they don’t bother with the concept of a ‘top sheet’ in bed but go straight for a light duvet. But even a light duvet is too heavy for the whole body for the whole night in summer, so I had to choose between sweltering and getting bitten. Except it probably bit me anyway. Ugh. I probably have a phobia of mosquitoes now, between that and last summer camping in Golden.

So we went to the Belfry for 9:00 when it opened, and it has 366 steps up from the lobby. The route up goes through various museum rooms: a treasure room, a room explaining the bells, the carillon mechanical room including the clock, and the top bell chamber. The stairs at the bottom were quite wide and made of stone, but the further up they went, the narrower they became, and they switched to wood halfway. At the top it was so steep as to almost be a spiral ladder. We made it to the carillon control room by 9:30 (about 330 stairs up) and I recorded a video of the drum turning, but I was surprised by the fact that you can’t really hear the bells over the racket the machinery makes. And we stayed at the top until 9:45 so I could hear the bells right above us.

We bought cheese at a corner grocery on the way back, checked out of our hotel, went back to the bakery where we’d gotten breakfast but we just got bread, then we went to the train station. We went in the wrong door, but that’s okay because that door gave us some lovely murals. The train company had come through for us with a new link to my month-long travel ticket, though they must have put it in manually and in a hurry because they misspelled my last name with only one L. But it worked, and we were off to Germany.

It’s going to take me as long to write about this trip as it did to go on the trip! XD

I think part of why I have a million more pictures of these things than of the natural wilderness such as we saw in BC last year is that to me, these towns and cities are more visually interesting. All these different old buildings are unique and you can fit a lot of unique buildings into a pretty small space, not to mention the stuff inside them. With a mountain or a forest, there are only so many pictures you can take of the same mountain or bit of forest. Tharash thinks of it the other way, haha!

Aachen