Bruges is a delightful city. We had breakfast and then headed out into one of the cutest old towns I have ever seen in Europe. The town has multiple canals, several huge church or civic towers, lively squares, and rows of neat Flemish homes stretching to a still-surviving moat around the whole center, complete with old-style windmills. Coochy-coo.

In cities and towns like these, half the fun is seeing the town. You can pick almost any street and find something worth seeing, even if it’s a residential area. We did actually go see some sights, but there was no real rushing of the journey.

The first stop was the Church of Our Lady, complete with a huge tower next to it – the largest brick tower in the low countries, in fact, at 379 feet tall. Sadly, it is not open to the public. But the church is, and is also undergoing restoration, so we got to see two people actually working on fine detail restoration on one wall. There were signs not to disturb them, so we could not ask any questions, but I had never seen this kind of repair work going on. It seemed slow and detailed.

The church is quite beautiful itself, including statues of all the apostles and Jesus. Most of the art of the church is kept in the back half, behind the altar, where you pay a small fee to see it. It includes some decorated brick graves from the fourteenth century, some recently revealed frescoes on the ceiling, a couple of bronze royal tombs, a huge altarpiece, and more. The most important piece of art is a Michelangelo sculpture of Mary with Jesus on her lap. They both look slightly sad, and it is highly detailed, as is all the Michelangelo work I have seen. As with all Christian art, I loved being able to tell what was going on in the paintings or sculptures.

From the church, we went to Bruges’ Begijnhof (the houses where single women could serve). The complex was smaller than Ghent’s, but this one is still somewhat active as a religious space – there are several Benedictine nuns who live here and still worship in the church. We got there in time to hear them sing noontime prayers. After the prayers, we went and toured a model of a typical house, and it seemed very comfortable, with a kitchen, dining room, sitting room, private courtyard, and bedroom. Our guide in Ghent had indicated that the women joining these communities tended to have some money, and I guess they were used to some space.

Near the Beginhof is a large park next to a canal, and we strolled through that. At multiple areas around Bruges, the city is putting finishing touches on huge sculptures around town, many of which you can walk on or in. We toured one floating on the canal – it was a three-story wooden structure with grand views of the park area.

After seeing much of the park, we walked for about an hour through several squares to get to a row of restaurants on a slower-paced street, where we ate lunch. Several of the squares have impressive buildings on all fours sides, with towers or decorations or statues or monuments. These tended to be fairly crowded, but as we found out later in the day, most people are day-trippers. By 8:00, most of these same squares are much quieter (except for the fish market square, where a German or Flemish band was covering “Born to Be Wild” to an enthusiastic crowd of all ages),

After lunch, we took an hour rest back at the B and B – useful for beating out the unusually hot weather we had today (mid-eighties). Happily, with a breeze and lots of tree or building shade, the heat has not been an issue.

After our siesta, we went back to the main square, but missed the bell tower climb, which closed at 5:00. So we took a Rick Steves guided walk from the main square, through a neighborhood, out to the canal/moat at the edge of the old town. It had trees and benches and a biking path (of course – it is Belgium), and several windmills. We took a break there to enjoy the place before walking south on the path to enter the old town again from a different place.

We finished the day with dinner and ice cream, in two different locations, seeing more of the town along the way. Bruges had some tourist-hype around it online and in our tour book, and it did not disappoint.