Benelux April 2013 -- Busy Bruges Streets

Bruges is a great walking town.  It's pretty flat and the cobblestones are well maintained for us tourists.  We did a lot of walking.  These pictures are some of what we saw along the way.

This is a city band.  I think they had just played for awhile in the square and we caught them as they were marching away.

People were waiting to see them go by.

They must have been freezing because it was very cold and windy that day.

We did some more exploring and were lucky that most of the tourist sites were not full of people.  This is the interior courtyard behind the city hall.

You may remember these buildings with the 1608 and 1614 dates from the canal boat trip posting.

People were paused here in their walk across the bridge to listen to these two young boys play.

People do have cars in Bruges, but you must have special stickers to park in some places, just like in any inner city.  Trees like this are common in Europe.  They are heavily pruned so as to provide maximum light in winter and shade in summer and so that they don't get too big for the area.

 Little markets like this one were set up in some places.

These pruned trees are espaliered.

This picture is really about the scooter.

Here we are heading for the Begijnhof.  More about that in another posting.

I took lots of pictures of this pair of swans before I got what I was hoping for.

Perfect!

For us these days it's hard to imagine the work that went into some of these buildings.  It's also doubtful that many people have these kinds of skills or that anyone would pay for them if they did.

Bruges has a line of windmills around part of the perimeter.  This was the best one, but not open when we were there.

The windmills are on a built up dike with a paved path up and a nice view.

 As we were walking around the windmill, a bunch of teenagers hit the area after school let out.

There was no lack of construction in the city.

We turned down a street and were in the midst of a bunch of other kids, mostly headed in the opposite direction from the windmills.  They were moving fast.

They needed to get to the bus stop to get home.  Note that these kids are all in uniform, unlike the ones near the windmill.

We probably should have gone to this old restaurant.

I mentioned earlier that it was very windy.  While we were having lunch, I tried to get a good picture of that.  This is a central transportation area and there are some indications of the wind.

This guy's hair had too much product to blow around much.

 This is the best picture I got to illustrate the windy conditions.

We were glad we were inside, cozy and warm, at least for the moment.