As often happens, after arriving in the old town, we realized we were a bit hungry, so we had some pains au chocolat:
Our first stop was at a church that has a Michelangelo sculpture. It's said to be the only sculpture to leave Italy during his lifetime. I really wanted to see this after reading The Agony and the Ecstasy earlier this year. I was not disappointed!
We walked around, admiring the medieval city, and found ourselves at the belfry. This was our second stop as we wanted to beat the crowd (such as it is in May) climbing the tower.
Here are Brian, Claire, and Gloria at the beginning of the climb:
Here's Brian at the end of the climb, near the mechanism for the bell:
We lost Claire and Gloria on the ascent -- there are several rooms off to the stairs where one can take a pause from the climb!
A family approached me and asked if I'd take their picture. Brian took a picture of me taking their picture. I'm taking my responsibility so seriously!
In return, they took our picture, but it's very dark:
Here is a view from the heights:
At the bottom of the picture, you can see little arrows. They had listed cities and how far away they are. Some were small, local villages only a few kilometers away, while other cities listed were large, like London and Paris.
After our descent, we decided to take a canal tour as a way to rest a bit.
Although this is not a picture of us, this is what we did:
There were swans and ducks with their babies everywhere. It was so beautiful.
Here are Gloria, me, and Brian:
And a picture just of Gloria:
A view of the buildings along the canal. Our guide was quite entertaining and told us anecdotes about various buildings. The tour was in Flemish and English.
This is perhaps my favorite photo of the trip and I'm thinking of entering it in a photo contest sponsored by a travel magazine we get with the hopes of winning free travel!There's a pillow placed on the windowsill, and the dog spends her days looking out over the canal.
After our tour ended, we rushed to another church that was closing in about 15 minutes for a 2 hour lunch. This church has a relic said to be the blood of Jesus, brought back from the crusades in the 11th century. Although I couldn't take a picture of the blood, here is the church in which it's contained:
Having just made the cutoff, we stopped at a sandwich shop and got some sandwiches to go.
Here are Gloria and Claire walking around Bruges:
We walked around the courtyard of a beguinage, but wanted to be respectful and didn't take any interior pictures. Here is the gateway. We are standing on a bridge over the canal.
Our final stop in Bruges was at the Brewery De Halve Maan. We could have gone on a tour, but decided against it as we had just been on a brewery tour the day before. We decided instead to sit and have a beer before deciding what to do next.
Having seen everything we really wanted to in Bruges (although I know we missed a lot!) we decided to take the train to Ostend, a town on the coast of the North Sea. Gloria hadn't yet seen the North Sea.Look at all of the bicycle parking at the train station!
We were there for some kind of boat festival.
They had booths set up selling crafts and antiques, beer and food tents, and entertainment.
After staying awhile at the festival, we decided to walk down to the sea. Here are Claire and Gloria:
Brian getting a closer look at the sea at the end of the pier. 
And then investigating the creepy things living where the sea and beach meet: 
Claire and Gloria decided to walk in the sea and get their feet wet.
We returned to Brussels for dinner. We were going to eat at an Indian restaurant, but not everyone could find something they wanted to eat, so (after we'd been seated) we got up and went to a Thai restaurant instead.Here we are at the Thai restaurant on their terrace:
After dinner, which we had relatively late, we walked around the city and had a beer or two. We decided that we would sleep in the next day since we'd been going pretty much nonstop for the entire trip.
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