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..