A two-museum kind of day!

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Hallo!  (I am told that that’s Dutch for “hello!”)

We went out for a walk last night (although no dinner, as we were SO over-stuffed from our wonderful lunch!) and it was SOOOOOOO cold and blustery outside!  [Margaret seems to have forgotten how hot it was in Rome.  Some people are never satisfied. – R]  I was wishing I had my winter hat and cold-weather gloves and definitely my cashmere sweater to keep me warm.  Fortunately, my coat is pretty warm, and I was wearing a scarf, which helped a bit.  We did some strolling through town and then found some canals to walk along.  Brugge is truly a beautiful little city!  We were in about 9:30 p.m. (and of course it doesn’t even get dark until 10:30 p.m. or so…)

View from our window!

Beautiful but COLD in the sunshine!

I love the canals!

It was so nice and quiet in the hotel last night; very peaceful.  And this morning I availed myself of our lovely bathtub for a wonderful soak…Breakfast started at 8:30 a.m. and was very good.  Freshly squeezed orange juice, a variety of cheese and cold meats, as well as eggs on offer … and anywhere that I can have a slice of pound cake and paint it with Nutella – breakfast doesn’t get much better than that!  We then had a bit of a rest, as it seems that NOTHING opens up here before 10 a.m.  So…we were out a few minutes to 10, and headed down the street from our hotel, and over the bridge, and then along the canal until we came to a small booth selling tickets for the boat!  Very easy; 8€ each, and we got in line.

If I look cold, it's because I am!

So lovely...

Beautiful houses and so well kept!

Me with eyes closed on boat...

Cygnets are so cute!

Love the architecture!

And the bridges...

In just a few minutes our boat pulled up, and on we got.  The boats say they can hold 40 passengers, but I think that would be a really tight squeeze…although as it’s still very cold and windy (albeit sunny), I think we were actually huddling together for warmth!  Our boat driver gave the tour in three languages – Dutch, French and English, and R said he also said things in German, which I can’t confirm.  We did a neat circuit of some of the canals; some of the houses are so beautiful, and there were two swans that we saw with six sort of middle-school-size cygnets; SO cute!  The tour only took half an hour or so, but I was completely frozen by the time we got back.  R, ever thoughtful, suggested hot chocolate at the closest place – Mozarthuis, so in we went.  I ordered mine with “whipped cream” – and unlike in the U.S. where out comes the can, this was REAL cream in a small bowl – and it was YUMMY!  (No calories there, of course…) 

From there, we decided to head to the Diamond Museum – and this was actually R’s choice, as he was interested in the polishing demonstration that they do every day at 12:15 p.m. 

Hot chocolate with real cream to warm me up!

It seems that the first diamond polisher was from Brugge, and that in the 1400’s, Brugge was an international center for diamonds and polishing.  The museum was fascinating – although they had one panel playing the Diamonds are Forever James Bond theme song over and over, and of course I can’t get it out of my head…We learned about diamonds, and cutting and faceting and finishing, and followed the progress of the Lesotho Promise, a massive diamond weighing 603 carats as it was split into 26 stones. 

Diamond polishing equipment

An expert at work!

Truly absolutely stunning.  The polishing demonstration was fascinating – and given simultaneously once again in three languages.  This truly is an international city!  Unfortunately, they did not give out samples at the end…I did ask…

As it was now lunch time, and we were determined to eat a light lunch so we could have dinner tonight, we found a noodle place right down the street from the diamond museum.  I had a bowl of noodles with beef, and R had a bowl with shrimp. 

Me with beef bowl

R with shrimp bowl

As R commented, on a cold day like today, warm is definitely a good thing!  From there, we did a bit of shopping.  Between the places selling lace and all the chocolate shops, you literally can’t walk five feet without hitting one or the other or both. 

I picked a place called Depla because it looked nice and interesting, and they make their own chocolate right on the premises.  (Apparently, from what we have read, the Belgians insist that their chocolate be FRESH and can tell if it is more than a day old!  I’m not even sure how that’s possible.)  Their chocolates are really beautiful, and if/when we open the box, I’m not sure how long it will take us to devour everything.  So far, that box is sealed…

From there, we headed toward the museum I wanted to visit today – the Chocolate museum, which was on the other side of the main market square.  On the way, we stopped at Sfeer, an antique shop that we had looked at yesterday.  They have some wonderful things, and neither of us can resist cut glass for very long.  At any rate, a beautiful blue decanter with six crystal and blue goblets, as well as a second, rather Art Deco decanter will now be heading their way to Tucson in the very near future.  The shipping wasn’t too bad at all – it’s rather like the U.S. and France – if it fits, it ships! 

Our two new decanters with glasses!

The man in the shop weighed everything carefully, and suggested that we might want to take the two stoppers with us, so that they could use more packing material in the box…sounded good to us.  They should arrive somewhere in the next 14 days!

Now that we were fully laden with chocolate and wine stoppers and a few other odds and ends, we finally made it to the chocolate museum.  This basically showed the process of how chocolate got started – with the Mayans and Aztecs harvesting the beans, and showing the Spanish when they arrived.  Little by little, this very expensive luxury worked its way to Europe and the Royal Houses and became a real hit!  At this point, it was basically in the form of hot chocolate.  It took some real inventors to add sugar to it and then make it into the form of chocolate that we know today.  We learned about cocoa solids and powders and creams – and what an intense process it is before it ever even leaves its home country, let alone gets to the grocery store in the form of Yorkie Bars!  Very, very interesting, and of course, it ended with a demonstration by a young man making some pralines that were really delicious!  See, if the chocolate museum can have samples, why can’t the diamond museum?? 

By this point, it was after 4 p.m. and we decided to head back to the hotel for a lie down before dinner.  (Also, so I could write this blog!)  Brugge is truly such a beautiful place, I would love to come back here when the weather is better.  (Even winter wouldn’t be so bad, as long as the wind wasn’t blowing.  It’s a virtual gale coming off the North Sea, and wow, that wind makes it awful!  And there are tourists here in shorts and sandals – I’m sure because that’s all they brought…)  So, will close for now!

Lots of love,

m

xxx