Four Days in Belgium: Bruges, Night One

What a wonderful couple of days it's been in Belgium! We did so much that I was way too tired to update the blog when we got to the hotel each night. Now we have a couple hours at the train station until our train, so here I am.

We started with a high-speed train from Paris to Brussels (1.5 hours!) and then a local(-ish) train from Brussels to Bruges where we spent two nights. Everything about Bruges is freaking adorable. It's touristy, for sure, but it doesn't even matter. Partly because there are bells all the time!

A sample of top-of-the-hour bells from our hotel room window:

It was early evening but still quite light out so we went for Rick's Bruges City walk to get ourselves oriented. The Markt is simply gorgeous at that time of night! And a little less crowded than it proved to be the next morning.

Unfortunately there isn't too much of the Markt that is original--most of it is 19th century Neo-Gothic, but most of the Belfort has been around since 1300, with the octagonal top of the tower added in 1486. More on the awesome carillon inside later.

Next we went into the Burg Square, which is the historic center of Bruges. We went into some of the buildings the next day so I'll mix in some of those photos, too.

The Basilica of the Holy Blood (the dark gray façade in the corner) was built around 1150 to house a relic that came back from the Crusades: a vial with a few drops of Christ's blood. I've come across a fair number of interesting-sounding relics but that was a new one to me!

The vial is inside this fancy silver reliquary--the doors at the bottom open and it is viewed for an hour or so once a day, and then paraded around the city once a year to celebrate Bruges.

The City Hall, attached to the Basilica, was built around 1400 when Bruges was thriving. City council has been meeting for centuries in the Gothic Room upstairs, which is covered with late 19th-century murals with important scenes from Bruges' past. 

This is one wall; the scene at the bottom is the crusader delivering the vial of blood to someone in charge of these things. Gross. 

From there we continued on our little tour, snapping some more photos: 

Canal + sunset = <3

 The back of the Church of Our Lady (13th-15th centuries), home of one of the only Michelangelo statues to leave Italy during his lifetime.

Emma Kay on a cute little bridge over a canal. Everything in Bruges is so cute!

Except finding yourself behind bars 😆 Then we got ourselves some recommended gelato at DaVinci--the stracciatella and dark chocolate combo I had was SO GOOD. I'm not one for fruit flavors, but another time we stopped Emma Kay encouraged me to try the lemon (and they forced the limoncello on me) and wow. Also amazing. So if you're in Bruges, look them up! 

One last view of the Markt after 10 p.m.! 

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