Belfry, Holy Blood, and awe-inspiring art

The crazy world of Bosch

 After the canal cruise, we went to the Groeninger museum to see the Flemish Primitives.  By that term, they mean great artists of the early years like Van Eyck, Bosch, Memmler, and Van der Weyden.  This was a great little museum and I liked that we were able to cover it in a couple of hours (and that’s with how slow John and I go) and there were no crowds at all.  We stood in front of the Bosch

This is what happens to judges who are corrupt in Flanders by Gerard David

 pointing out little weird things for as long as wanted, same with the Van Eyck Madonna which John and I both fell in love with.  The amount of detail in these paintings is the extraordinary thing and I’m including some of the close ups in order for you to see what made them so great.  We decided to hit a pub on the way back to 

Jan Van Eyck, check out the close up of the old man

 see the Holy Blood and there was no food there, but John did get a good beer.  This is the first time that Rick Steves led us wrong, he said light food, but it was expensive and nonexistent.  But we were able to get out, go see the Holy Blood and got to see the vial of

You could not believe how detailed this was

 blood in its jewel encrusted gold crystal holder on a red velvet bed with a priest in beautiful raiment standing above it.   

On to go climb the belfry.  Now, I have been dreading this trip because of this one climb.

David again and look at the water, ripples, translucence

 I know that we have been climbing a ton on things, but if you’ve seen in Bruges, you know that it’s twisty, narrow, and a lot of steps that Americans have heart attacks completing and I didn’t want to be that tourist.  

The Holy Blood

I thought about telling John to go up on his own, but I don’t think we’ll ever come back to Bruges and I don’t want to say that I didn’t do this, so I sucked it up and climbed 366 stairs to the top of thebelfry.  And I have to say that this was way easier than a lot of other things that we have climbed.  There were places to stop along the way and find out about the bells, the gates, the carillon, and the worst part was the vertigo from turning so much and people not giving 

  way when passing on the very narrow, unevenly spaced width and depth wise stairs.  I don’t know how John did it with his big feet, my feet only fit sideways on these stairs, but this was not Brunelleschi’s dome which I have to say is the hardest thing that we have 

 climbed on this trip with St. Olav’s in Estonia coming in second.  So, if you’re in Bruges, climb the belfry because it’s not as bad as it looks.  Got some great pictures from up there and

 were in time to hear the bells go off, John most likely is deaf because he filmed them, while I, (like any intelligent person) covered my ears for all I was worth.