Bruges : Shopping and Frits

Shop display in Bruges
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I have been keeping it in mind that today would be shopping day. Time to buy all those souvenirs you feel bound to bring home. However I’m less keen to really get down to it.

I have breakfast as usual, but I’m not feeling my best and don’t leave Nicky’s until about 11am. My first goal is to finally post my postcards. I had finally knuckled down last night to finish writing them and now I just needed the stamps. Luckily I know where the main post office is, it’s a grand building next to the Belfry in the Markt.

Here I sit and munch, whilst listening to a string quartet playing in the square outside.

Lacemaking in Bruges
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When I get down to the Markt, I head straight off to the post office, buy my stamps and finally get my hands on a telephone card! Why on earth didn’t I try here earlier in the week? When I had found the first public phone booth, I’d checked out how much it would cost and had checked out which coins to collect. After a day or two, I had enough saved up only to discover that there was no slot to put the coins in. They must have been converted to a different system fairly recently. Out of frustration I had tried my mobile, but that didn’t seem to want to work either!

Patron Saint of Bridges, Bruges
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Now gripping my brand new phone card, I go straight outside to the nearest phone box and call Mum. Needless to say she hasn’t been worrying and had even worked out how to read the text messages I had sent through to Dad’s mobile. Unfortunately we get cut off fairly quickly, as I had only bought a €5 card.

I head off around the shops looking for lace. It’s really hard to buy lace in Bruges. Although it’s everywhere you look, most of it is cheap machine made stuff from the Far East. You really have to read all the labels carefully to make sure you know what you’re getting. It’s particularly important that I get it right as I want to get some as birthday presents. I have a couple of friends who make bobbin lace as a hobby and will spot anything that isn’t just so.

Decorative brickwork, Bruges
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Eventually I end up back at Minnewater and visit the shop where I bought some last year. The owner was very helpful last time and comes up trumps again. She finds me two different, reasonably priced pieces of Bruges bobbin lace. They should fit the bill.

As I’m on a roll, I decide to find Mum’s present in the same chocolate shop as I did on my last visit. When I track it down, I confuse the poor shop owner by buying a kilo of just one type of chocolate. I explain that the cherry centred sweets are my Mum’s absolute favourite – and I will be an extremely popular daughter when I bring them home.

Lost in the streets of Bruges
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Next on my list is my brother's present and I head back up to the Markt to visit the Tintin Shop. This is the second time I’ve been in and once again I just can’t find the right thing. Most of their stock is extremely expensive or simply not something he would be interested in. I’m beginning to get fed up with this shopping lark. At this rate I’ll be finding something at the station tomorrow!

It’s time for a break. I buy a tray of frits from one of the little green huts in front of the Belfry. As I’m not a fan of mayonnaise I have mine with ketchup, like the plebe I truly am. For somewhere suitably cool to eat them, I find a bench in the Belfry’s courtyard. Here I sit and munch, whilst listening to a string quartet playing in the square outside. You know, I really don’t want to go home tomorrow.

Typical Flemish home, Bruges
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Although I had climbed the Belfry earlier in the week, I had meant to come back to see the Rodin exhibition inside. So I decide to do it now. It contains a number of reproduction bronzes and plaster casts in a variety of different sizes. My absolute favourite is a massive plaster cast of The Thinker. It is a stupendous piece of work. You can see the fragility of the material, crisscrossed in a series of cracks and fractures, but you can also see the tremendous tension in the figures body. I walk slowly around it and I have to remind myself that it is just a sculpture. I’m sure it’s actually moving, or to be more accurate, twitching. An incredible compliment to the artist, as Rodin was shunned for much of his life by the artistic community.

Water trough, Bruges
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After visiting the exhibition I wandered around to the back of the Belfry and was suddenly transported back seventeen years to my first visit to Bruges. I clearly remembered looking around these shops back then, buying postcards because I had already lost my camera in Brussels. The shops are set back from the street in a sort of under croft.

I finish the day by wandering around the canals and back streets of Bruges. In fact I deliberately decide to loose my map and simply wander, confident in the knowledge that it is simply impossible to get truly lost. I find almshouses, step gabled homes and quiet cobbled streets. Each time I come across a familiar street, I try to find another one that has yet to be explored. In this way I eventually find my way home, pleasantly tired.

Flemish style, Bruges
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To celebrate the end of a wonderful holiday, I decide to have a slap up meal tonight. Unfortunately it can be quite difficult to persuade Nicky that you don’t want the special! She had already given me the usual soup starter, before I could ask for a different main course. I go for a steak with a pepper sauces and frits. Now I already knew the food was good, but this was just sublime. The steak was actually quite small but extremely thick – and it was perfectly rare (something else I had to persuade Nicky that an English woman would eat). If I had been worried that it was too small that was quickly dispelled. I could barely move afterwards and had to give up on a dessert. The chef came to say goodbye to me and I complimented him profusely. He was a really sweet chap who obviously took great pride in his cooking and he accepted my compliments with a mix of embarrassment and pleasure.