Good morning!
Good morning from Bruges!
We are in Belgium in what might be the most charming town in Europe - honestly.
Yeah.
It’s actually a UNESCO World Heritage City.
All of the medieval buildings here are so well preserved.
It’s absolutely stunning walking around so we wanted to explore all of the history and culture
and that’s what we’re going to do today.
We wanted to start at a stop that would give us a really good sense of the local history
and so our first stop is the Folklore Museum.
So we’re in the museum and the idea is that they’ve set up different scenes throughout history
from the nineteenth and twentieth century in Bruges and the surrounding area.
It’s neat.
I guess you just throw them on.
Whoa!
That’s pretty good.
Oh!
Ah too low.
You drink a beer or two.
Oooh!
Well we both got a ‘9’.
Hello buddy.
[meow]
Oh yes.
All right.
Bye Mr. Man.
So we’ve just left the museum.
It’s very small.
It’s only four Euro and it’s pretty quick to walk around
and I really liked seeing the old scenes from history.
So that was a nice way to start the day.
Yeah, really good.
Plus the kitty was really cute.
So we’re going to keep this tour movin’ along.
We just walked into this square called the Burg Square
and it was here that the first inhabitants in the city settled around the second and third century.
And this building behind me is the town hall - the gothic town Hall or Stadhuis -
and it was built in 1376 and for over 600 years
the city of Bruges was governed from this beautiful building.
The history here is just on a completely other level.
We’re walking through this huge market right now called the Grote Market
and there are so many tourists here.
And city tours and walking tours and all of the above.
So this is definitely not a place to come to avoid tourists,
but they’re all here because this city is insanely gorgeous.
Like the tourists are here because there’s so much to see
and everywhere you look looks like a postcard.
The whole town, this historic centre, is just mind-blowing so…
This is what you want to see when you come to Europe.
Yeah, exactly.
This square right here.
Yep.
Right now.
We are so happy to be here.
We’ve made our way over to this church called Church of Our Lady and, among other things,
it’s most famous for its altar piece which is by Michaelangelo.
It’s a marble sculpture of the Madonna and Child
and he created it in Italy around 1504 and it made its way here to Bruges.
We’ve just come out from the church where we spent a bit of time
and, wow, there’s a lot of history there.
Quite a lot to see but I think the main draw for people to come is,
of course, seeing Michaelangelo’s Madonna and Child.
It’s made of Carrara marble.
It’s set a little bit back in glass
so you can’t get right up close to it which is too bad but
it is still beautiful from afar.
We actually had to throw our prescription sunglasses on just so we could see.
Must’ve looked so weird but it did help me see it better so that worked.
But the interesting thing about its history is that
Michaelangelo created it for the cathedral in Sienna in Tuscany
and then two brothers who were merchants from Bruges
purchased it and they brought it back to this Church of Our Lady.
And then it’s actually been taken - looted - by foreign occupiers twice.
First by French revolutionaries and then by Nazi Germans
and it’s been recovered twice and returned to where it belongs here
so that people can still see it in Bruges.
So it’s travelled quite a bit but it’s in its rightful home again.
Now we’re heading across the street to Sint-Janshospitaal which is -
Ooh nice Dutch.
I’m trying.
It’s kind of like German.
It’s called St. John’s Hospital and it’s been a hospital since the 1100s.
It was a hospital up until 1977.
So it’s now a museum and we’re going to go check it out.
So inside the hospital was mostly fifteenth century religious art
but, to me, the most interesting artifacts they had there were old ambulances.
They had two examples of sixteenth century ambulances
which were basically boxes with handles
and the sick or wounded person would be placed inside the box however it worked -
sitting, standing - and then carried through the streets.
Not very comfortable when you’ve broken your bones.
Yeah.
…to be shoved into that little box.
I imagine it wasn’t the smoothest of rides to the hospital.
But I think you’d just be glad to be getting help.
But they really didn’t have a lot of knowledge, obviously, back in the 1100s
about how to care for wounded or sick people
and so I guess a lot of the care that went on there was more like devotional, spiritual care
because it was sisters and brothers of the church
who were the main caregivers there in addition to some surgeons.
So with a lot of the death that was happening there,
there were a lot of prayers being said for people and…
and rites and that kind of thing.
And there was this fantastic old painting that showed what it looked like as an operating hospital
back in that time and under the arches there are beds and there are nuns attending to the sick
and just really interesting.
There’s even an example of one of those ambulances being used to carry somebody in.
So I really enjoyed seeing that painting.
It kind of brought the space to life.
So anyway that was interesting to see.
It’s kind of raining now but it’s not too bad
and we’re going to go on to our next place and we’re hungry.
So we’ve arrived at the Frietmuseum
which I feel like any trip to Bruges wouldn’t be complete without.
Yeah, when I heard there was a Fry Museum I knew we had to come here
and apparently you can eat fries here.
So we might even do that first because I’m really hungry.
We’re starving.
But we’re going to find out why they’re called ‘French fries.’
I was starving when we got here
and now walking around this fry museum I desperately need some fries.
Like right now.
And I think the fry shop that we’re going to is going to be really good considering it’s a fry museum.
It had better be anyway.
‘Cause now we know what makes a fry good.
They sent these fries into space for two hours.
And then they found them thirty kilometres from Brussels.
I feel much better after eating.
So much better and the rain has gone away.
I know - so we’re lucky.
But you know when you reach that point you’ve just been kind of walking around sightseeing all day
and you just want to eat anything?
ANYTHING?
So when I heard they had burgers I was like, ‘Who cares?’
We’re in.
Give me a burger with the fries.
So that was good.
Anyway the fry museum was interesting.
It was very text heavy.
There was a lot of plaques to read
and it was very cramped at times so it was a little bit difficult to read
but I thought the most interesting part was actually upstairs at the end
where they had all of the various paraphernalia of the fries and what, you know,
the fry carts looked like in the 50s.
Replica fry house.
Yeah, just all the fun little tchotchkes that people make out of fries.
And we got answers to two very important questions.
One: where do fries come from?
And they are Belgian.
They originated in a region of Belgium where people used to eat little fish that they fished for in the river
and they were really small little fish and they would fry them whole in oil
and eat them crunchy.
And in the winter in the 1750s that river that they used to fish on froze
and so they couldn’t get the fish anymore.
And so they cut potatoes in the same size and shape as those little fish
and fried them in oil and that’s how fries were born.
And the second question that was burning was
why people call them French fries or many people.
Especially in Canada and the United States we call them French fries
and it’s been really hard this whole time to try and not say French fries.
‘Cause I don’t want to offend anybody.
But apparently it started during the first World War
when American soldiers met some Belgian soldiers who offered them some fries or chips.
The Belgian soldiers were speaking French because they were from the French-speaking part of Belgium
but the Americans assumed that they were from France because they were speaking French.
So the Americans went home and told everyone that they had eaten these fries that were French.
French fries.
That’s how it started.
And apparently there’s no, like, historical proof of this but that is the kind of accepted story around here.
And it’s on a plaque at the fry museum so that is good enough for me.
But that was fun and I feel like if you’re in Belgium and you love eating fries
it makes sense to go to the fry museum.
So that was time and money well spent as far as I’m concerned.
And I think now, because it’s stopped raining, we should take advantage of the canal us behind
And go for a river cruise because apparently there are over 80 bridges
and it’s called the ‘Venice of the North’ - one of them -
I can see it.
and there are certain parts of the city that you just cannot see except from the water.
So we better go check that out.
We gotta do it.
Back of the boat like the cool kids.
What a way to finish off our day here in Bruges.
That was a half hour boat ride all around the water.
That was totally worthwhile because you really do see things that you wouldn’t see just from the sidewalk.
So I feel like that was really worthwhile.
And we had a really funny captain who spoke six languages and was funny in all of them.
I can’t even crack jokes in French so to do it in six languages, like, wow.
Yeah, that was worth the price of admission.
And he was telling us all about the history of Bruges:
how it became rich, how it became poor, how it became rich again.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed walking around Bruges seeing all the sights as much as we did.
It’s just absolutely gorgeous here.
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Bye!