In Bruges Part IV

Great thing about museums in Bruges: buy one ticket, get into a few museums. Buy another ticket, get into a few more. If a bunch of rooms are closed at the Groeninge Museum, get a super reduced rate (1 euro for students). Then again, the Groeninge Museum without its best Flemish Primitivist art wasn't much of a Groeninge Museum at all. We elected not to to use our super-reduced-rate ticket to get into the Museum's extension across the courtyard, instead choosing to enter the Notre Dame of the city, the choir of which I've already described. To get into the choir, we had to buy another 1-euro ticket - which also got us into the Gruuthuse, just next to the cathedral. During our tour the previous day, Tom had explained that the family with the privilege of running the Gruthuis (which collected taxes on products needed to make beer) actually connected the Gruthuis to the cathedral via a private passageway, so they could attend Mass without leaving the comfort of their own home.

The path between the Groeninge Museum and the cathedral takes you over this ridiculously quaint/picture-perfect bridge. You can see the ambulatory of the cathedral, and to its right, the Gruuthuse. The little gate right on the water is where the Gruthuis occupants would meet incoming boats to exact the tax on the beer-related products they were carrying.

The Gruuthuse

(looks like someone combined Princeton's Collegiate Gothic architecture with Harvard's brick fetish)

After the Gruuthuse, which seems to be the Museum of Mundane Objects Throughout Bruges' History, we stopped into the Stadhuis to see the Renaissance chamber and learn about the city's political history.

Actually, the Stadhuis is composed of about 5 quasi-separate buildings, each of which is designed in a different period's style: Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical, with a touch of Neo-Gothic thrown in for good measure. Here, from left to right: Classical, Baroque, Neo-Gothic.

After lunch (more on that in another Flemish Foodfest post), dessert, and a waffle, we stopped into Sint-Salvadorscathedraal, which is the "main" cathedral, then walked to Konigin Astridpark, and finally it was time to leave Bruges.

Until next time, Bruges, city of kind people and weird serpent benches . . .