In Bruges

The sun finally made it's way out this morning.  After finding our way to this wonderful B&B, I immediately updated the blog.  With that done, we ventured into the streets of Bruges.  Our first stop was an open air market, mainly for locals. Walked around and took in the local color.  Next we walked down to the historic center of town and hopped on a canal boat tour before things got too crowded.  It was a nice ride with some good history and great photo ops.

On board we noticed an antique flee market along one canal, so we headed for that as soon as we disembarked.  Ran into Carol and John and ate our sandwiches (compliments of the Magnifque) on a bench before going our separate ways.  We were all still carrying left over Mars, Milky Way, etc kind of chocolate from the ship.  John looks around and says "Here I am in the chocolate capital of the world eating a KitKat bar!"  We all broke up laughing.

Bruges has several museums - we started with the hospital museum - lots of paintings of healing, mainly religious, and there is also a display of some very old instruments.  For the price of this ticket, it also got us into the old apothecary museum.  This was fantastic.  So sorry we couldn't take  pictures.  This ticket somehow also allowed us into the archaeological  museum.  Another interesting museum was the Gruutshuise.  This is a huge house that was owned by a very rich man built next to The Church of Our Lady.  This guy was so rich, he had a room built so that the shutters of the window open up into the church!  Again, no pictures, but it was pretty cool.

Slowly made our way back to the B&B after a cafe.  Got Lucy on Skype and that was fun talking to her.  Freshened up and started out again to meet the gang for dinner.  As usual, we had a great time and wonderful food.  Made plans to meet Cora for dinner tomorrow night - we are now just three.  The three of us took a walk after dinner to scope out where to go tomorrow night.  We were told to go to the fish market area if we want good mussels - so that is where we will meet.

Walking around Bruges at night is beautiful.  G bought one of those tiny tripods and started taking some really nifty night shots of the Bell Tower and City Hall. Back to the room by 9:30 and we are looking out our window at the famous Church of Our Lady fully lit.  Should sleep good tonight.

Next time....A little Picasso