Tot ziens, Brugge!

Translated from Dutch, this means Goodbye, Bruges.

Turns out, Belgium is a country of two languages. French in the Brussels region, and French Dutch (basically Dutch with a Flemish twist) in the Bruges area. There are lots of other areas of course, but this is all I know right now. Flanders plays a role, too, but Brussels and Bruges are both, apparently Flanders, so... 

On this, our last day, we did the usual. I walked my ass off, and Fred sketched his ass off.  I actually took my laptop with me on today’s walk, thinking I could blog a bit, which I did, but not much. I stopped for a latté at a sweet café right in the middle of the hustle and bustle. Kind of fun. I’d been choosing more secluded spots, but this was my last blast. 

There's something about latté in a glass that makes it more special.

I walked around a lot more and took more pics of things that inspired me.

I have expected this thing to be a person inside jumping out at me like I'm being punked on Ellen.

Homeless Jesus, also known as Jesus the Homeless, is a bronze sculpture by Timothy Schmalz depicting Jesus as a homeless person, sleeping on a park bench.

My un-trademarked side hustle business of naming things is called You Name It, I Name It.
It's hard to make out, but this frame shop's slogan is You Name It, We Frame It. Meh.... 

From now on, I'm calling the wine shop the WIJNWINKEL :) 

Teeny tiny pizza truck!

Who says hedges have to be parallel to the ground?

And.... here's that guy again! Painting the SAME thing as yesterday!

This was his subject. A worthy one. 

And dinner was at the place we tried to go the previous night. Le Trappiste — a basement pub with somehow vaulted ceiling almost cathedral-like, but lower. HUNDREDS of beers, so we did one flight to share and had one more each from what was our favorite of the flight. Mine was a 10% Chimay Tripel which Fred was very concerned would knock me on my ass, but since I’m used to wine at 11% (?) it did not. 

They had only “nachos” for food there, which sadly really meant chips and salsa! ZERO sustenance. So Fred got a sandwich thing on the way home and i got my second ice cream of the day which was good and cancelled out the crappy one I had earlier in the day. 

And.. I'm folding Tuesday, our travel day home, into this post since it is not much to speak of, and no pics. I'm calling it:

Planes, trains, automobiles, and buses.

The order of vehicles: Uber to Bruges train station. Train to Brussels airport. Plane to Dublin. Shuttle bus from tarmac to inside airport for a 5 1/2 hour layover. Plane to Boston. Cab home. 21 hours of travel.

Not much more to say. I chatted with some strangers. One young man and one old man. The young man is the son of two federal prosecutors and grew up in Newton. Fascinating stuff! And the older guy — probably not much older than I  — was a principal at a Boston charter school for math and science. I enjoyed him although our politics differed. He’s one of those people who does not like Trump as a person, but likes his policies. I don’t want to spend another minute of this precious life trying to understand this. 

A few more posts to come — one farewell to Ireland with Owen's drone footage, and a few with my theme photos from the other day. But for now, I'll just leave you with some pretty pictures — which are almost embarrassing to show because they basically take themselves.. they are postcards...

A lot of the roofs are like this one — "stepped."  Here's what I learned on Wikipedia:
A stepped gable, crow-stepped gable, or corbie step^[1] is a stairstep type of design at the top of the triangular gable-end of a building.^[1] The top of the parapet wall projects above the roofline and the top of the brick or stone wall is stacked in a step pattern above the roof as a decoration and as a convenient way to finish the brick courses. A stepped parapet may appear on building facades with or without gable ends, and even upon a false front.

This guy was literally eating cherries and tossing the pits into the canal.
Life.... 

The patio of my dreams.

This is like, four to six hanging plants — one of dozens or even hundreds in the city.

 

The movers got a kick out of us getting a kick out of this wayward Chesterfield. 

I wondered about the meaning of this Free Palestine poster. FASCINATING. From Wikipedia:

The watermelon is a symbol of Palestinians' public expression in protests and artworks, representing the struggle against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.^[2][3][4]

The Palestinian flag, coloured in the Pan-Arab colors of red, green, white and black, had been banned in Israel in certain situations, leading to the locally-grown and similarly-coloured watermelon taking its place in Palestinian iconography as an alternative for decades.^[5] Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel banned the display of the Palestinian flag and its colours in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with the Israeli army allegedly arresting anyone who displayed it.^[6][7]  In 1980, the IDF shut down an art gallery in Ramallah. Accroding to the exhibit organizer the IDF explained that the rules forbade Palestinians from displaying red, green, black and white, and watermelon is an example of art that violated the Israeli army's rules.^[8] 

In 1993, as part of the Oslo Accords, Israel lifted the ban on the Palestinian flag.^[9] At the time, The New York Times claimed "young men were once arrested for carrying sliced watermelons",^[10] but Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour has cast doubt on the validity of these claims. A later editor's note to the article says "Given the ambiguity of the situation, The Times should either have omitted the anecdote or made it clear that the report was unconfirmed."^[10] Mansour remembers an early conversation about it, however does not recall any actual watermelon iconography being used until 2007, when Khaled Hourani created an image for a "Subjective Atlas of Palestine" project. Other artists who have used the watermelon include Sarah Hatahet, Sami Boukhari, Aya Mobaydeen and Beesan Arafat.^[11]

In 2023, the Israeli ministry of National Security banned the Palestinian flag in public places. In response, many Israelis displayed watermelon stickers with "This is not a Palestinian flag."^[8]

Since the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war in 2023, the watermelon symbol has experienced a resurgence in popularity. A growing number of individuals are leveraging it, often using watermelon emojis (🍉), on various social media platforms to show support for Palestine.^[12] Particularly, the symbol may be used to circumvent censorship and shadow banning on some platforms, avoiding more overt symbols such as Palestinian flags.^[13]

I guess I'd call this is a sort of art installation, or maybe just creative gardening. These boats — simply wooden boats with no steering apparatus or anything — are filled with plants..

Just like the Fourth of July. Only it's the 21st, and it's Belgium.

Belgium's National Day is July 21. To learn way more than I know about it, click here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_National_Day#:~:text=Historically%2C%20National%20Day%20is%20marked,the%20King%20and%20other%20dignitaries.

All I know really is it is a very festive day in a wholesome European way. Sure there are drunk teenagers, but there are also lots of families... all ages... and singing. I'd been told there'd be singing and thought it would be some kind of moving anthems, so this is the reason I did not AVOID the main square. But the singing was like a big karoake party with Ed Sheeran type songs, the lyrics of which were on a huge screen, and on a stage were some performers dancing, and one guy seeming to lip sync. All quite odd, but very happy. It was night when, after dinner, we learned th big Biden announcement, so when we walked by the spectacle I personally was feeling a little bit more hopeful and less "oh I wish we had a happy country like they do" and more like, "maybe we can be a happy country again." I'm a Joe Biden super fan, but I do think he did the right thing and I consider him a hero. My heart was full.

But back to the beginning of the day. Fred found a sweet trio of houses to draw right on our street, and I walked 24,000 steps and saw every single corner of Brugges. I took a billion pics and had a perfect day. 

I took pics in themes:  lace curtains (lace is a big deal here), unique house numbers (some seem to be city-provided, while others get creative), door knobs (Fred's idea), weird little cubby holes I don't know what are (will find out), and inspirational messages I find posted about town.  I'm not sure how I'll share these collections. Possibly new blog posts, one for each, or one big post with "chapters."

First I had a waffle on a stick — a good way, I figured, to try one of their national foods without being too decadent. But it was, in fact, nauseatingly decadent and I inhaled it in about 90 seconds, as if the faster it disappeared, the fewer calories I'd take in.

I chose milk chocolate (I know, sacrilege in a city know for it's good chocolate) with salted caramel bits. 

So one thing I had to do in Belgium was done — eat a Belgian waffle. The others were to eat mussels, and drink the beer. I did the latter. 

Some pics I took during my 24K steps:

A MAIL slot, I think!

Well, look who I ran into!

There was a cool restaurant (closed) with a time piece theme. I could see in and there were just hundreds of old clocks of all kinds.

Here's the place — not my pics. Oddly the name of the restaurant, Bottelier, means Bottler... I would have put money on it meaning clockmaker.

Love this!  Lots of salad fixings! I think it was behind a restaurant. 

This made me happy. I feel like someone knew this was an artful way to tie this trash bag :)

Close up on this and you'll see tons of repairs and filled-in areas in the bricks. The stories it could tell.

Love a trompe-l'oeil

A Tupperware store on the main shopping drag. 

Tonight's dinner was supposed to be at a beer place Fred had been excited about, but it was closed for the holiday when we got there, so after a lot of Googling and discussing, we settled on going back to De Republiek, thinking it was a good choice since it was very untouristy. Good decision. Lovely evening in their courtyard. We asked for some cheese as an app, and this is what we got: 

Basically a Mason jar with like 75 cubes of cheese and one packet of mustard. 
Odd but tasty!

We split a veggie burger (we first thought the burger was meat, but were told it's vegetarian so we rolled with it) and some spicy drumsticks. Way too much food, which happened a lot in Belgium because it's heavy, rich, and filling.  Oh, and fries, of course, the other food I had to try. TOTALLY just like our fries. Odd. 

Dinner selfies: 

Fred getting creative again.

As I mentioned, this was the night Biden dropped out — one of those "where were you when..." moments that we'll never forget. We both kept getting dings on our phones and ignored them out of politeness. But one of us (who shall remain unnamed) caved and read the news from his friend Charlie. 

On the way home, we walked through Market Square which was like the piazza in Sienna. Just a giant open area lined with outdoor "cafés," in quotes because they are not quaint like a café might suggest, but HUGE with rows upon rows of tables, at which are seated people facing out, like they're at a theater... which they sort of are. 

Selfie at our little bridge:

Met a sweet corgi named George (Georges?) on the way home. The owner said,  Oh, God, is he peeing? He does that when he's excited... which I took as a compliment. 

And a couple of videos to give the full feeling of National Day in Belgium. 

Click to watch.

Click to watch. 

Oh, and I put this nifty thing together over latté. It's a list of the swing states, how many electoral votes each gets, and who won it in 2020, and by what margin. Then I named a prominent politician/prospective VP candidate for each state that has one. 

My verdict: Mark Kelly.