Day 10 - More Bruges

At breakfast our B&B hostess explained why Bruges is so special.  From 1300 to 1500 it was the largest city in Europe with 35K people and the most important trading center.  Many large, beautiful homes, hotels, and civic buildings were built.  Then the Zwin River silted up during 2 years of storms and ships could no longer get to Bruges.  Unemployment hit 90% and the city sat stagnant during the industrial revolution while the rest of Europe modernized.  Then in the late 1800's a traveler wrote a book about how Bruges was stuck in the Middle Ages and tourists flocked to see it.  The city has been booming ever since and has vowed to restore and maintain its Middle Age style of buildings.

Everwhere you look in Bruges you find interesting sights.  One of the first today was a swan on the canal carrying her cygnets on her back.

Cygnets Going for a Ride

We started the day visiting one of the Alms Houses.  These were built in the 1200's by rich merchants who couldn't spend all day praying but still wanted to get to heaven.  Their solution was to build a group of small, one-room homes for old or incapacited people and provide shelter, food and fuel in exchange for 4 hours of prayer every day in the small, co-located chapel.  This was one of the early systems of welfare of which Bruge citizens are proud.  Now the Alms Houses are government owned but still provide housing for the poor, and are scattered around the city.

Then we toured the Gruuthuse Museum, which is a converted mansion.  On display were artifacts from around 1500 or earlier including many illustrated books, written music and a Letter of Indulgences explaining how people could earn indulgences.

Ruth Stirring a Pot in the Gruuthuse Museum

Illustrated Book in Gruuthuse Museum

Then we toured the St. John's Hospital Museum in which Nuns cared for the poor and travelers who fell ill from the 12th to the 19th centuries.  In addition to hospital tools, paintings and related items, there were many relics of saints in reliquaries on display.  I think that if you gathered up all of the fragments of saints from all over the world and reassembled them, you would have some enormous saints.

Next we toured the Church of Our Lady where Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary of Burgundy are entombed, along with an urn containing the heart of Phillip the Handsome.  I don't know what they did with the rest of poor Phillip's corpse.

Statues Above the Tombs of Charles and Mary

Lastly, we saw Flemish art through the ages in the Groeninge Museum, including some of Jan Van Eyck's work.

We had a real Flemish dinner in the evening with our hosts, Rudi and Nicole, and got to know them better.  They said that this is the coldest May in 130 years and warm weather is two months overdue.  The day was very cold and rainy so we were wet and cold most of the time we were outside.  There were enough interesting things to see in the museums that we could forget about our wet shoes.

Here are some photos of supper:

Tomato Soup with Cream and Meatballs

Asparagus with Egg and Shrimp

Pork with Bearnaise Sause, Tomatoes and Belgian Fries

Creme Brulee, Tiramisu with Belgian Biscuits, and Chocolate Mousse