The comment yesterday about sunscreen might have been premature; today was an absolutely glorious day (the locals said we should feel blessed…we’d normally have gotten wet), and learned a lot about medieval trade and about why the residents of Flanders have a warm spot in their hearts for the Canadians…
We very much enjoyed a good night’s sleep onboard the Prima, and as always had fun watching the ship come into port. We tied up in an industrial port not too far outside Bruges; the port’s main business is as Europe’s hub for the import and export of cars and trucks. There were miles and miles (this writer is not quite going metric) of cars parked waiting to go somewhere.
Our excursion today took us into the middle of Bruges. The city dates back into the Middle Ages, where it served as a major trade point, joining north, south and east trade…fabric, spices, lumber. 50,000 people lived here back in the day, at least until the bottom fell out of that trade; the channel connecting the city to the sea silted in, politics played a role, and the shipping route moved to Antwerp. The population was cut in half overnight.
Despite any number of wars, whether religious or geopolitical, Bruges survived. Today it is a major tourist destination for Europe and an UNESCO Heritage site. We saw a number of ancient buildings and walked about 3.5 miles over cobblestone streets and squares.
We had 2 hours of free time here and we used it well. We enjoyed a boat ride in the city’s canal system (14 KM of canals in total, we didn’t see them all), enjoyed a Belgian waffle, bought some Belgian chocolate, and Greg had a Belgian beer (a local Tripple, it was good).
Interesting notes: there is a brewery downtown that uses an underground pipe to carry their beer a couple of miles away to their bottling plant. In the Middle Ages beer was healthier to drink than water; many homes had beer piped into their basements directly. Secondly, we saw an old Catholic hospital that dated back to the plagues of the Middle Ages; it had a back door opening into the canal so that Black Death victims could be delivered to the hospital discretely.
As for the Canadians…they liberated this part of Flanders in both World Wars, making them favorites of the locals.
