We didn’t have much of a plan today other than to find the Michelangelo statue Madonna and Child. It seems silly not to check out a Michelangelo if you have the chance.
It was a nice statue. I’m more of a fan of Bernini sculptures but this was lovely with a nice story.
While I liked the Michelangelo I enjoyed some of the other artwork in this cathedral more. I’ve always been fascinated by skulls and skeletons in churches. Probably because this is an unusual image in US churches.
The choir was beautifully carved.
The confessionals were also nicely carved.
The above confessional was neat. I think the angel on the left represents being burdened with sin and the one on the right is set free by confessing her sins. At least that’s how it reads for me…
The two tombs above are of Mary of Burgundy and her father Charles the Bold. The tombs are placed just in front of the high alter so they must have been important. Or rich. Their story is actually pretty interesting (they effected world politics pretty intensely) but I don’t want to fill my blog with history. Google it.
The pulpit was lively as well. The whole thing looks like it rests on the human figure at the bottom.
Our second church of the day was St. Saviors. It wasn’t as spectacular as the first but there were some neat things.
Enough with the churches. It was likely going to start raining around 2pm and so we decided to do a canal boat tour while the weather held. This was an amazing 1/2 an hour on the water in one of these…
Most boats we saw were packed though they look more crowded than they feel, and we had a couple of empty seats right next to us. The guide was a retired Englishman with a style of narration that gave you a since he really loved this city and didn’t have a care in the world other than to enjoy it.
As you can see below this city is just as photogenic from the water as it is from land.
Time for a waffle and coffee. We went back to the same waffle place since the waffles were great and the server was cute. They don’t use batter like we do, they use a yeast dough.
We ate our waffle in The Markt and looked at the courtyard of the belfry then grabbed a couple of chocolates and headed back the the hotel for a nap.
We had a hard time waking up from our nap. The lack of sleep and time change caught up to us a bit, Mike especially. We thought maybe we’d walk a block to a little restaurant around the corner, grab a quick bite and go back to bed. We’d sept through a little rains storm and was expecting more but then the sky cleared up completely so we ventured out into a part of town we hadn’t yet seen.
This area had no tourists so we had it to ourselves with the exception of a local or two. We found a sign that said it was St. Anna’s district.
We could see on our little tourist map we were pretty close to one of the windmills that circle the town along the moat.
We walked quite a bit and the wind was making it chilly. Fortunately I’d purchased a nice linen scarf hand woven by this master weaver from Latvia.
The amount of linen thread he has on the loom can make around 9 scarves. He changes the placement of the thread for each scarf to make a different design. He and his wife live in Bruges for five months selling their scarves the go home to Latvia during the winter and make more to sell. They are quite the craftspeople.
This kept me warm as we headed down the main street back to our neighborhood and to this restaurant just behind our hotel.
I had penne pasta with a pesto sun-dried tomato sauce with prosciutto. Mike had a yummy beef stew. And frites. With Mayo. (I think he’s hooked.)
The food was good and the atmosphere fun and friendly. A little neighborhood restaurant not really catering to just the tourists.
Back to the hotel to pack up. We have an early train to Brussels where we grab our train to Cologne, Germany.
Art’s Travel Adventures 