There’s something about the air here. It’s not the golden light (when the sun comes out) and it’s not the rain (it did that all morning today). It the sound of Bruges – the bells that chime all day here, whose music echos through the streets in peals of little bells with high-pitched rings, and bigger booming bells responding back. I can’t honestly say I recognize the sounds as songs, they just seem to happen and have an ongoing presence. Sometimes the bells seem to call out on the hour, and sometimes their dance just seems continuous. But it’s all part of the atmosphere of this lovely little burg.
Yep, it rained today, for at least the entire morning, and I guess that’s one consequence of my travel pattern of avoiding the high season summer months. I travel a bit more in the rainy season. Even so, I’m sure this place is intolerably awash in tourist in June July, and August.
The other thing I need to point out is that today was a Monday, and locally, museums are closed on Mondays. I always seem to find one day when all of the museums are closed, and I guess this was it. It would be nice if they were staggered, but nobody seems to do that. So when days like this happen I try to focus on some of the more local places such as the churches, and… Chocolate.
I started the day at the Basilica of the Holy Blood. Churches in Europe often have large reliquaries, containing large assortments of holy relics, often of questionable provenance. This isn’t something we see in churches back home.
This church is said to have a vial with Christ’s blood, wiped from his brow by Joseph of Arimathea, and taken from Constantinople during the Crusades.
It is paraded around the town in a sanctuary each Ascension Day. The vial itself wasn’t available for viewing.
Next door is the Stadhuis, which like much of the town here, is being readied for Christmas.
Upstairs, the Gothic Hall hosted the first “parliamentary meeting” in 1646 and made for an enjoyable few minutes
As I stepped outside, the rain started to fall, so I escaped to the Chocolate Museum, which features the history of chocolate. I won’t say it was a must-do, but it was open and offered me dry shelter.
Right inside the door they had this 120 kg chocolate egg on display
They showed some of the tools traders would have used to cut chocolate and sugar, such as these hammers and axes, which was mildly interesting.
And they displayed numerous chocolate serving sets that were once in vogue.
I personally appreciated the discussion of the health benefits of chocolate.
None of this really made me crave history, however. Instead I craved chocolate, and therefore passed much of the afternoon visiting chocolate shops and tasting and buying chocolate.
They have chocolate shops all over town, so I researched which I should seek out, and focused on them. They sell all sorts of bon bons and pralines, and I was happy to buy a large variety to take home with me.
It was here that I developed a new term, “Walking Around Chocolate.” There is chocolate that we buy to take home, either for ourselves or as gifts : That chocolate is properly packaged. There is “Emergency Chocolate” that I keep stored at home in case I just need chocolate fast. The vendors here sell something different however: little plastic bags of chocolate that are just perfect for stashing away for easy access while walking.
“Walking around chocolate” is something I should always have in my life.
As the afternoon grew cooler I found myself in a “tea room” built just for hot chocolate, warming myself over this massive cup of steaming milk. The cup was expectant, waiting for a dram of dark chocolate to be whipped in. And in the end this was just the thing I needed to finish up a wet morning and an afternoon of chocolate eating.
The chocolate in Bruges is delicious. And it has taught me about “walking around chocolate.”
For that I am grateful.
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