When we left the USA, we had a large list of what we were hoping to see on our trip. I don’t think it matters how long you are on vacation…you probably won’t have enough time to see everything. This is definitely true for us. Some cuts need to be made for time constraints, but you do the best you can to see as much as possible. Then, there are situations completely out of your control. This was the case yesterday when we were in Brussels…
Not having good internet connection, and not understanding the language in Belgium…we were quite cut off from what was happening in the world. Well, we hit quite a number of places in Brussels (as you saw by yesterday’s blog) but the last thing we wanted to see before getting back on the train was this park. It’s no ordinary park (as you can see in the pictures on the link) and would have been amazing to see. Well, we got off the train and as we went upstairs to the street level (through a TON of construction), there was a maze of things to maneuver through to just try to get across the street to the park. Well, as soon as we walked about a half a mile through the maze (where we could SEE the park entrance), we were stopped by the police and asked if we had a badge! Now imagine this…here we are…carrying a bag full of belgian chocolate, a backpack and a camera bag (can you say tourist?)…and you ask if we have a BADGE?!?!!? Come on now! All we wanted to do was to go across the street to the park! At that point I was done. We had been walking for 4-5 hours and I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I looked at Keith and asked, “…what the hell is going on?? I don’t care if the heads of states are here…I just want to see the park!!!” Well, apparently we were right next to the European Union Headquarters where the heads of all participating countries were in town trying to deal with the Euro “crisis”. Nice. Who knew!! So, the point of this story is…we didn’t get to see all we wanted to. But that just leaves more for next time…whenever that will be. 🙂
Now…let’s get on to the pictures!
So…in Knokke-Heist…how do you move your furniture into these tiny entries? Apparently, like this! It was really cool to see from our window.
Nuts!! But that answered my first question when we arrived . 😛
Anyway…because it was our last full day, we wanted to stay closer to Knokke-Heist so we had time in the evening to get everything packed up. We wanted to explore more of Bruges, so we decided that would be a good place to go. This time we wanted to explore the less touristy area, the lace museum and walk the back streets. Thankfully, we got exactly what we wanted.
Hahaha!! Keith found this in the beer store…FBI = Famous Beer Inspector. 🙂
Along the side streets, the trees are all grown like this. Flat like a wall and trained to grow along those wires. It looked really cool!
This is the church across from those trees.
Here we are along the canals. It’s just like a fairy tale land!
Here’s Keith checking the map to ensure we’re going the right way. The area he’s standing in is a flea market type of place set up in a square with pre-made areas set up for vendors to show their wares. It’s covered too. I think every city that has farmer’s markets should have one!
Well…look at that…Keith found a local pub. Hee hee!
The next place we went to was the lace museum and this church…the Jeruselemark. It’s much simpler and smaller than all other churches we’ve seen. But it’s a neighborhood type church steeped in history. The item Keith is looking at is a family crypt. We are unsure as to who it was but it had a man and woman shown on the top, along with their dogs. There are very old family crests lining the crypt which we’re guessing has a strong tie to the church.
The view from the other side of the church.
Keith captured me just sitting and taking it all in. There was so much to see all around.
In another area of the church there was a little room (that I was looking into) that was a memorial to Jesus. There was a life sized statue of Him lying down as if he just came off the cross. Interesting. From there, we went to see the lacemakers creating lace. What a process to do it and watching how they create the designs were fantastic! I couldn’t take any pictures in there though.
Now just take a look at the brick work on this building. Especially above the windows in the archways. Those were just some great masons!
Here is the famous Belfry in Bruges. We were going to climb up the steps (all 353 of them) to the top but apparently there were a lot of people in line with a ton of squirly teenagers so we decided to avoid it. From here we said good-bye to Bruges for the last time and felt like we explored all we wanted to see.
And for the final funny pictures of the day…on our walk back to our apartment, we came across this sign. I’m sure you can guess what it means. It was sitting next to this:
Hahahahahahaa!!! That’s for my pet loving friends. 🙂 Until next blog post!