Day 6 – Friday – Bruges

Bruges was added to our itinerary after we watched the Colin Farell – Ralph Fiennes movie “In Bruges”.  Apparently we weren’t the only people who took Colin Firth’s summary of Bruges with a pinch of salt, and decided that the town had a lot more to offer than his initial assessment suggested.  The town’s tourist map that we picked up from the i-site had the following description in its 5 minutes history section.

“2009 – The movie “In Bruges” wins an award for best scenario(??).   Colin Farrell declares “If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges would impress me, but I didn’t, so it doesn’t”.  But the movie only attracts more tourists”.  Apparently this wasn’t the first time Bruges had been spoken about in less than flattering tones.  In 1892 the popular book ‘Bruges la Morte’ describes the city as a dark, poor and ugly place.  Locals weren’t too happy with this, but tourists saw some romance in it, and numbers increase.

Bruges is a beautifully preserved historic town centred around a large square (the Markt) which has the Belfry on one side, the Provincial Palace on the other and a large number of tourist restaurants on the other 2 sides.  These restaurants all serve the “local Belgium dishes” – Mussels and “Frites”, Stew and Croquettes – all good summertime fare – and of course Belgian Beer.

Like Amsterdam, Bruges is also a canal town and together with its striking architecture, makes it a very pretty town – kinda like a fairy tale – which I think was how Ralph Fiennes described it in the movie.  The easiest was to see Bruges is by walking it, and we enjoy doing our own walking tours, so we headed off on our walking tour (a la local guide book – 10 Euros) mingling with the horse drawn carriages and the many tourist groups, off the cruise ships, following their leader who is holding a number on a stick – i.e. there are a lot of groups, following a lot of leaders.  This influx of tourists, turns the town into absolute bedlam, while the cruisers are all marched at a grey pace from interesting spot to interesting spot, to be filled up with facts, and at some point food.

Bruges used to be a port city, and in fact that was the source of its early wealth, as it was the connecting point to Genoa and the Mediterranean trade.  Around 1500, the port silted up, so it lost its trade, but then somebody had the brilliant idea in 1907 of building another port, hence the town of Zeebrugge….. (Sea Bruges) was created.  The tourist map’s entry for the years 1600, 1700 and 1800 is “Bruges falls asleep”.  No other entry.

Part of our walking tour on Friday brought us to the Pablo Picasso exhibition.  We have been to (one of) the official Picasso Museums on a previous trip, and were amazed at the range of work that he had done, and what a versatile artist he was.  He was also a prolific artist both in terms of the quantity of art he produced, the relationships he established, both with contemporary artists and desirable woman, as well as the offspring he produced.  In fact, that becaome something of a highlight of the exhibition, trying to work out who he was with, when, for how long, and what off spring resulted.  Most intriguing was the name of one of his wives / partners / lovers – Olga Koklova.  I’ve seen a couple of spellings of her name, but the one above is my favourite.

Anyway, as I say, Picasso was a prolific artist, and not all of it was good, so the order of interesting exhibits we saw from Picasso and some of his contemporaries, was:

1.       The painting by Renoir

2.       Understanding (which isn’t possible) the intricate relationships created by Picasso and his revolving door of female companions (some of whom me with grizzly ends)

3.       The self-managing lawn mower mowing the lawn (badly) in the courtyard outside the exhibition. 

The day finished with us having an early dinner with a former colleague from Wellington and then enjoying a couple of drinks in a full-on, totally pumping, strobe light infused court yard near to the hotel.  Of course it hadn’t started out full-on, but as we arrived there about 10pm, at sunset, we didn’t realise what was about to transpire, so as we settled in for a quiet drink at the end of an enjoyable day, the lights came on, the bass went up fasher than the hemlines, and we were there, people watching the younger generation gearing up for a night out.