I had promised to go back to England for Christmas and the New Year and Nancy and her daughter decided to come along too. As Staveley at Christmas is not the most inspiring place we decided to take a little break before arriving there and spend some time in Belgium. We hadn't visited Belgium before (it seems to get overlooked) but ever since watching the movie "In Bruges" I have wanted to go. So we flew into Heathrow on 19th December and caught the Eurostar from St Pancras to Brussels and then from Brussels a local train across to Bruges.
It was all a bit tenuous as we had tickets for a specific train (no changes allowed) and our trip from the US didn't start well. The flight from Sacramento to San Francisco was delayed meaning we would miss our connection to London. United put us in a taxi for the 90 mile trip down to SFO and we made it in time for our London flight which itself was delayed. We did finally make it to St Pancras with time to spare, which was good as the overseas internet purchase of tickets on Eurostar and the return to Chesterfield on Midland Mainline did not seem to work very well. It probably took a good 30 to 45 minutes and a lot of human intervention to get the tickets sorted out - a warning to those with close connections on the trains out of London.
Even the impressively fast Eurostar was delayed through the tunnel so nothing was worked out according to plan. Nevertheless, we did arrive in Bruges around 11:00 pm after a very long day of travel. Taxis weren't to be seen so we walked through the cobbled streets of Bruges to our hotel - the very fine Dukes Palace.
Next morning we were out and walking around Bruges. It was cold but there was no snow on the ground. The wind made it even more bracing. The main square in Bruges, the Markt, and its Bell Tower is of course the big attraction. There was a Christmas Market (as there appeared to be in all Belgian towns we visited) and an ice rink and we amused ourselves watching the incredible inept British family negotiating ice. The line to ascend the Bell Tower was quite long, so we gave that a miss.
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| The Bell Tower in the Markt in Bruges |
Nearby is the Burg Square where there are more fine buildings and the Basilica of the Holy Blood. A church in the corner of the square that has a vial of Jesus Christ's blood - allegedly. It obviously was very revered and carefully watched over by a clergyman (what an exciting job that is) but I wasn't impressed. It all looked rather suspect.
Bruges is certainly a pretty city, and really quite small and compact. We walked along the canals, visited a few churches and window shopped in a lot of touristy shops and we had pretty much covered the town by lunchtime. We did a brewery tour around one the older breweries in town (de Halve Maan I believe).
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| Canal view in Bruges |
In the afternoon we toured the Hospital of St John museum where they have an interesting array of medical tools from the 1500's and some nice paintings by Hans Memling. I left the ladies shopping to visit the Groeninge Museum - an art museum focusing on artists from the region. A Hieronymus Bosch and a Rene Magritte were the only two I recognized but still it was a nice collection.
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| Markt, Bruges |
For dinner that evening we had the obligatory Mussels and Frites. They were great, as was the lobster. However after just one day we felt we had seen most of what there was to see in Bruges and we decided to move on. We wanted to visit Ypres to see some of the World War I memorials and museums but that proved difficult - no cars to rent, a long (time wise) train ride - so we decided to go back to Brussels.
Next morning we left for Brussels (trains every half hour) and found a nice older hotel, the Hotel Metropole on the Boulevard Anspach. Brussels is a nice walking city but there are parts of it that are not so inviting, a little bit shabby in places. The market square, the Grand Markt, is, however, the most spectacular square you could imagine. Quite large and surrounded by spectacular buildings - each one a gem We passed through it many times on our 2 days there and it never failed to amaze.
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| Nancy and Arden in the Grand Markt, Brussels |
In the afternoon we visited the Magritte Museum. A great collection of his work and well worth the visit. We finished the day off strolling through the streets, a visit to a church (not sure which one), a wander around an antique market, an interesting chocolate shop with very large chocolate penguins in the window, the Mannekin Pis (very small, not so impressive).
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| Church in the Grand Markt, Brussels |
For our evening meal we walked over to the St Catherine/Fish Market area. It was very busy and there was the usual Christmas Market with lots of people drinking in the outdoors on what was quite a cold and wet evening. There were a couple of merry go rounds which were quite spectacular. Probably fairly recent constructions but very elaborate and wonderful rides - beetles, space ships, ocean liners, flying dinosaurs, ostriches, etc.
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| Carousel, Brussels |
The next day we set off for Ypres, although further away from Brussels than from Bruges it was much more convenient to get to being a direct and frequent train. Ypres was quite a pretty little town though when you consider what went on around there in the First World War it is hard to see it in the same light. Being the 100 year anniversary of the start of the war, they are making a big deal of it in Europe and I am sure this area will be receiving a lot of attention.
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| The Menin Gate, Ypres |
There is a good museum on the war in Ypres and we spent most of the time there. Horrific stuff with so many lives lost. At the entry to the museum you can enter your name and country of origin in their system and at the end they tell you how many people with your name from your country were killed. There were 648 people with the name White killed in WWI.
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| WWI Cemetery, Ypres |
After the museum we walked through the very pretty town (completely rebuilt after the war, it was just rubble after the war) and visited the memorial, the Menim Gate. There is a small cemetery of war dead in the town and I paid a quick visit there before catching the train back to Brussels.
Our last night in Brussels I finally got to try the Flemish Stew (an ok beef stew) and we paid another trip to the Fish Market to see the carousel. Of course I had to bring back chocolate so I squandered a lot of money on some very fine chocolates. How can a town support so many chocolate shops, it feels like every other shop is a chocolate shop?
The next day we walked to the station down the drab and dreary Boulevard Anspach to the railway station and boarded our Eurostar to London. A quick hop across St Pancras and we were on the every so crowded Midland Mainline train to Chesterfield and home for Christmas.
Here are some more photos of the trip.
