Forward my mail to Bruges, Belgium

I want to live here.

Okay, okay, I know I've said that before but, honest to gosh, Bruges is the most beautiful city in the world!  Ordinary streets are so pretty -- and it's street after street of medieval beauty everywhere you turn.

But I can only move here if all of you move, too, so let me tell you more about Bruges so you'll start packing your bags. Today we had Belgian beer ...

Belgian chocolate ...

Belgian waffles ...

... and I bought some Belgian lace.

We started off the day with a visit to the Groeningmuseum (below).

Since I love Flemish art the best, this small museum had many delights, such as works by Jan Van Eyck (below).

We learned today that the incredible paint colors of the Flemish masters (which made them very popular in their own lifetimes) were possible because they used linseed oil instead of egg yolk to make their paints!  You swear you're looking at photographs sometime.  Look at these colors in the robe (below) from the painting above!

Here were some other favorites of mine today (below) ...

Can I tell you a secret? This has never happened to me before in a museum but today I saw this painting (below) and I started to cry. I was so moved by this couple in this painting called "The Evening of Life."  Look at those faces!

Coincidentally, about an hour after I left the museum, a dear friend texted me today that she had read an interview with Billy Graham and they asked him what was his biggest surprise in life. The reverend replied, "The brevity." Maybe that's what I was feeling when I was looking at "The Evening of Life."

Later on in the museum I saw this group of paintings (below) ...

... and discovered those paintings were by the same artist who painted the elderly couple in "The Evening of Life" which I saw four rooms before!  His name is Edmond Van Hove. He lived in Bruges from 1851-1913. Why have I never heard of him?

Are you ready to see Edmond's self-portrait. It's below ... and I'm in love!

Okay, okay, enough about the museum. When we all move here, I'll take you to see it!

Next we went  -- well, after the museum gift shop where the clerk cut her finger and didn't want to ring up my sale because she was bleeding and didn't want to get blood on my merchandise and I got band-aids out of my backpack and Earl put one on for her, but that's another story --  to Church of Our Lady. The reason we wanted to go there was because it has a Michelangelo. This statue, often called the Madonna of Bruges, is the only work of his art that Michelangelo allowed to leave Italy in his lifetime. It is simply stunning.

I found out that this statue plays a role in a George Clooney movie I have never seen called The Monuments Men. It's about an Allied group that tries to save works of art before the Nazis destroy them. This Michelangelo statue was hidden in a salt mine and then rescued (news photo below)!  Remember me in a salt mine?

Just for fun, let's have a photo of George Clooney in my blog.

Okay, one more.

Man.  Okay, focus, Jane.  After the museum ... the Madonna ... we went on a brewery tour, at De Halve Mann (below), founded by Henri Maes in 1856.

After we saw some modern equipment (below) ...
 

... it was walking through some old, old parts of the brewery, including some rooms we had to enter by climbing down steps backward! It was an enjoyable time, without endless details and facts and figures. I have my limit, but Earl loves all of it.

I enjoyed learning that in Belgium in 1950 you had a beer man (below) delivering regularly to your house, just like my Mom had a milk man!

We had a beer after our tour, and Earl and I enjoyed talking with a young couple from Brazil who had left their children at home for the first time for a vacation without them. Talking to them made me realize how alike people are, in many ways, no matter where you're from.

So today was an extraordinary day -- but not extraordinary for The Grand Tour. Earl reminded me that we leave for home two weeks from today. I thought by now I would be ready ... but I don't want this to end.

I started this post with telling you how pretty every Bruges street is, even ordinary ones. So why is our apartment building -- so great on the inside  -- the ugliest building on the block? Earl is standing in front of the garage door to our building (below).

The buildings are nice all around ours, not spectacular but charming. But, yeesh, is ours drab! No wonder they don't put any photos of the outside on theVRBO website. We still would have booked it, BTW. So as you and I are making plans to move here, we will pick places to live with more curb appeal.

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Thanks for reading my blog!

Jane