Monday 25 July: The plan today was to visit Damme and Sluis, two old towns a short distance north of Bruges. In the 13th century, Damme was the port for Bruges, to which it was linked by the river Reie.
The river has now been converted into a long, straight, tree-lined and picturesque canal, Damse Vaart, which continues to Sluis.Damme was much smaller than we expected, but a nice little village with an impressive Gothic town hall.
We sat on the banks of the canal and ate the food we’d bough earlier from Lidl – similar to an Aldi store that also has pre-prepared lunch items.
I was intrigued by the image of a dog on the town flag and shops. "The legend says that the devil, with the appearance of a stray dog, scared the dyke builders with his yelling. When a dyke once broke, the dyke builders cut the head off the dog, pushed the body in the gap of the dyke and Damme was saved both from the flood and the dog's yelling. Hopefully for the dog, this is only a legend." (http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/be-vwvdm.html)Damme has more recently become known as a book town, with numerous bookshops and regular book fairs. Frances was very keen to visit the fish market marked on our map – possibly to get some fresh herring.
We wound our way to the location, only to find a residential cul-de-sac. Frances talked to a local resident and found that the fish market had indeed been there – 400 years ago. No fresh herring! We did find however a scooter that looked like it had been fished from a canal.
Sluis was about 10 km further north along the Damse canal, and in similar countryside, mainly fields of corn and wheat with some cows and sheep – very rural.
The town received city rights in 1290. During the Eighty Years' War in 1587 the town was captured by Spanish troops under the Duke of Parma and was retaken in 1604 by a Dutch and English force under Maurice of Nassau.
It was a small walled city and I was interested to have a look. We arrived at a large carpark, which had an electric car charging station, and a Tesla plugged into it.We left the car and walked towards the very busy town centre – only then did we realise that we had crossed seamlessly back into Holland!
We were all desperate for some coffee and a toilet so we stopped at a café and had some coffee and apple cake. The town centre (pop 2,000) consists of two roughly parallel streets which were full of shops and people – absolutely crowed and a complete contrast to Damme.
The streets were bustling with shoppers and tourists, which belied its modest size. A big feature was an operating windmill (now restaurant) near where the streets converged. It had a motif above the door of the same running dog as in Damme.The city wall by contrast only appears as raised embankment on the edge of town, overgrown by weeds and other vegetation.
The big attraction for us was a cheese shop and delicatessen, De Grote Kassboer. It had a huge selection of mostly local cheeses. Tamar asked if they had a Leiden cheese (Leidse kaas) with caraway seeds.They not only had it, but in fresh and a stronger flavoured matured version as well - she bought some. Also, they were bottling a range of wines sourced from places from barrels in the shop – you could also bring your own bottle. We bought a bottle of French Merlot to try.
We decided to take the walking night tour of Bruges which started at 8pm in the Markt, the town square.Nowhere near night-time, but as the guide Nicholas said "If I start at 10:30 no-one will come."
The square, and other parts of Bruges, was filled with Pokemon Go players all intently playing with their mobile phone screens.Nicholas began by telling us some of the more interesting stories and legends, and story-legends about Bruges – some true, and some maybe not-so-true.
The tour covered a different part of Bruges, to the north and west – more of the trades and working class areas. He talked about how traders from different city-states built their own places within the city.
He first started at the Italian section where the Venetians, Florentines, etc. built their houses then the Spanish (Spaanse Loskaai) and Eastern (this meant German, Oosterlingen Plein) sections. The size, design and decoration of these houses reflected their wealth and power at the time.
There were also houses of the wealthier citizens with small alcoves built over the canals as toilets, depositing directly into the canals.
We were asked to imaging the mud, filth and smells of the medieval city hundreds of years ago - I’d rather not.
Already, the smells in the market square where the horse carriages wait for their passengers and some stagnant sections of the canals was impression enough.
We passed the former red light district which was also home to many breweries and beer houses, including on that has just celebrated 500 years of continuous operation.
Nicholas pointed out many of the small features and items that add to the complex history of Bruges, such as the story of the hand of the devil holding a golden eel symbolising the punishment for taking eels from the canal. This is symbolised by a small stone sculpture on a bridge over the canal. There are also bronze shells embedded in the cobbled streets for pilgrims as part of the Camino de Santiago from Northern Europe to the shrine of the apostle St. James the Great in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain.
This area is also the location of the homes and retirement villages of various guilds who pooled their funds to build them, such as the ship-builders guild in the photos.
I really liked the Jerusalem Chapel by returning crusaders which was built to be an exact copy of the one in Jerusalem. Apparently the interior was used the film “In Bruges” in the scene when they were discussing the blood of Christ.
The tour finished at one of the two windmills within Bruges before heading off for a beer tasting.
NOTE: The photos were taken at sunset and twilight, so the quality's not so good.
The night-tour included a free Juplier beer at the Bauhaus Hotel, a fairly light brew.They take beer fairly seriously in Belgium, with apparently around 400 breweries making the stuff. The Bauhaus also provided a beer tasting of 6 beers for €18.
As it was by now about 9:30pm we bought two tastings between the four of us. Probably just as well, as the beer were around 6%-8% alcohol, stronger than we’re used to.There was quite a variety in the beers we tasted, and the host explained a little about the history of each one. However it got more and more difficult to hear him as the night wore on as the crowd of tasters became rowdier as the consumption progressed.
The highlight was a tasting of Westvleteren bier, a 19th-century Cistercian monastery & Trappist brewery with beer sales by appointment. The brewery's three beers have acquired an international reputation for taste and quality, Westvleteren 12 being considered by some to be the best beer in the world.The beers are not brewed to normal commercial demands but are sold in small quantities weekly from the doors of the monastery itself to individual buyers on an advance-order basis.
The beer is so exclusive that there were only 4 bottles to share among about 20 people, poured into 4 glasses that had to be passed around. The vote was that it was pretty good, thumbs up, however the sharing of the glasses was given the thumbs down.
By now it was close to midnight, so we left the still-lively hotel and headed home, through the streets with people still playing Pokemon Go in the dark.
