Bruges, Belgium

19 September (Friday):

In the morning we took it easy, eventually checked out of the hotel and took our luggage to the car.  We then walked around viewing the sights and got to the Diamond Museum about half an hour before they give a daily Polishing demonstration.  We looked through the museum, then went to the demonstration.  The girl who gave the demo repeated everything in perfect French, then English.  She was prepared to say it in Dutch too but didn't need to.  It was quite fascinating and not at all the process we thought it was.  We then walked to our B&B and found out where to park the car.  We went back to where the car was parked, stopping for a bite of linch on the way, then drove to the B&B (not an easy thing to do with so many one-way streets and VERY narrow streets), left the luggage, parked the car and were settled for the next couple of days.

20 September (Saturday):

The main things left for us to do was to visit some Museums.  The temperature is quite chilly in the mornings so I spent part of the morning getting my blog and pictures organized and posted, waiting for it to warm up.  Then we went for a walk around some canals and ended at the Choco-Museum and watched a demo of the steps to make chocolates.  After that we set out for the main square where we bought two tickets for us to see 5 of the many city museums.  We went into two museums that are in a building on the square and count as one on our tickets.  Portable hand-held guides come with the multi-museum tickets so we each had one and listened to as much about some items as we wanted.  The guide really was good to have in the second museum as it was really just an extremely ornate room where justice was decided by the town council in the past.  To get anything at all from the room we had to listen to most of what they said.  It was very interesting.  Back out in the square we went over to a church and read the signs about what there was to see.  Just as I was about to speak to Hans I felt someone bump my pouch that was against my back (strapped around my waist).  I quickly pulled the pouch to the front and found the zipper open and my wallet and one of our museum tickets gone!  I was totally distressed for several minutes.  After thinking about what had been in my wallet I realized the only think I had to do ASAP was notify VISA that my card had been stolen.   Everything else can be fixed later.  As it was not yet 8 am in Vancouver I decided I could carry on with our sight-seeing.  I hadn't had much money in my wallet so the whole thing is more a nuisance than a tragedy.  We continued and visited 2 more museums.  At the first one I gave them one ticket and said the other had just been stolen.  To our surprise the girl gave us a replacement ticket at no cost! After that we headed back to our B&B where I sent a secure message through the on-line banking system to the VISA people.   We went out to a restaurant called The Stove for dinner.  We got the only unreserved table.  There are only 8 tables in the place.  A man, the chef, and his wife, the waitress, run the whole thing themselves and that is all the clients they can handle.  The food was excellent and the evening most enjoyable.

21 September (Sunday):

After breakfast, about 10 am, we started a walk that took us past 5 old wind mills along the river.  Today is a Special Sunday the town has, I think once a month.  Cars are banned in the town centre and all the city museums are free!  We thus went free into one of the mills that has been turned into a museum.  The stairway in was almost like climbing a ladder.  The mills were used for grinding all sorts of grain.  The one we went into had two grinding wheels so could do two kinds at a time (or double the amount of one kind).  From there we went to the Belfry Tower, used our Museum Tickets (no free-bee there!) and climbed 349 spiral stairs to the look-out.  In the pictures you will see three views from the top.  With the crowds wanting to climb the tower they limit the number of people at one time to 70 and still passing people on the stairs, especially the upper part where it is very narrow,  is a bit precarious.

We walked for a total of 5 hours, going into every city museum we came across.  By then we were worn out and wanted to sit in cafe patio in the sun and have something to drink.  There were so many other people with the same idea that we ended up returning to our B&B so I got to get this blog up to date.

22 September (Monday):

Time to leave Bruges.  We went to get the car to the B&B before breakfast, opened the door and found it was raining!  Definitely time to leave.  We drove off about 10 am with the GPS operating once we made our way to the ring road, which was quite easy.  Then the GPS started telling us strange moves.  We did the first couple and found they took us the long way around to get to the freeway, though not too far.  There was once on the trip to and around Paris where they didn't tell us to go right be we know we had to because we know what road we had to be on.  Once we got near Chambord (our destination) the GPS started giving weird instructions again.  We ignored them and made our way to our hotel, right across the road from the Chateau we had come to see.  We arrived just after 4 pm.  We settled into our room then went for a walk.  The forest around the Chateau is immense.  We walked for over an hour, just down along a river/moat to a bridge and back on the other side of the water.  The only place to eat dinner is at the restaurant in our hotel.  The hotel seems a little run-down so we didn't expect much from the restaurant.  Wrong!  The food was wonderful, especially as, unlike the countries we have been in so far, the French focus on vegetables.  Our dinners were magnificent!  The problem is the we loved the breakfast so far but we know the French have just sweet buns and coffee, so what I am going to have I don't know.  We find out in the morning.