Day 21 Saturday, September 20, 2025
We drive an hour and a half to visit Bruges. First stop is the market which was supposed to be open for another hour but most vendors are packing up because of the cold and rain. 
We see this huge contraption which I am sure is a spider, but it is not moving. I just looked up Bruges Giant spider and found this little video on Instagram…I was right, it is a spider! https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO3Y573jK1r/ 
It is miserable out, lots of umbrellas, lots of rain and it is cold.
We take refuge in this cathedral along with a lot of other people. It isn’t very warm but it is at least dry. I sit and write in my journal and Bob checks out the cathedral. I am content to just sit and rest for a bit.
There are large beautiful tapestries on both sides of the altar.
There is an announcement in several languages that the church is closing and will reopen in a couple hours after lunch. So we walk to the huge central square, lined with beautiful old buildings. It had stopped raining. The entire old city of Bruges is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city was not damaged in either of the two World Wars so much of its Medieval heritage remained intact.
The streets are packed with tourists and it starts to rain again so we find a MacDonalds and hide out there for an hour and have our lunch. It is dry and warm and no one cares how long we sit here.
The rain stops and we decide to get tickets for a canal boat ride. There is a line but it moves fairly quickly and we watch the boats coming and going while we wait in line.
While we are waiting I notice that there is a tight rope walker high in the sky! If you look carefully at the previous photo you can see her in the top right corner just above the rooftops. Yes, it is a woman, when she hangs upside down we see a ponytail. A rope almost 400m long was stretched at a height of 70m between the Belfry and the Church of Our Lady.
Soon we are travelling on the canals which give us a great view of many of the buildings in Bruges.
You can see the high wire attached to the cathedral tower.
We pass under many bridges, some of them so low we need to duck our heads.
The geese on the canals are owned by the city of Bruges and the penalty for killing one is five years in jail!
The city of Bruges is famous for its well-preserved medieval architecture, including many buildings featuring stepped gables. Houses with lots of steps on the gables showed that the owner was rich. 
I wonder if the houses on the canal are damp, with the water lapping at their foundations.
This is the oldest bridge in Bruges and our driver/guide tells us that if you kiss under this bridge you will have everlasting love. We kiss.
There are a variety of interesting buildings along the canals…
..and some great views.
There are also signs that Autumn is here.
This medieval building was built using wood, which was a fire hazard. Most buildings in Bruges were built in a style known as Brick Gothic. 
After our boat ride we wander the streets and see this. Lots of people are entering the building so Bob says we should follow them. 
It is an open house for the new Brusk Art Gallery which will open in 2026. We enter a room with shipping plastic wrap. We aren’t sure what it is supposed to be… 
…until we enter the next room and there is a large tape art installation in the form of a web structure, and there are people climbing inside of them! All of a sudden the giant spider we saw earlier makes sense.
I want to climb inside…my turn next!
It was interesting trying to walk around, but not really all that difficult.
This was so much fun! Here I am inside this giant web-like structure.
There is the hole I climbed through to get inside.
All too soon it is time to climb down. This was such fun.
There were several of these ‘webs’ in this huge room. What a clever idea.
Belgium is famous for its chocolate, which comes in all shapes and sizes!
There is a Carillon performance at 4:00. We find a spot to sit just as it starts and listen to a variety of music for the next hour. The carillon is a piano like instrument that plays 47 bells. 
One of the musicians was very young.
I do a bit of pen sketching while I listened to the music. The last song played was Beethoven’s Ode To Joy and most of the audience stood up. The lady beside me told me that it is the anthem for the European Union, which has its headquarters in Brussels. 
This is an interesting building, skinny at the front and then widening out as along the streets on either side. 
We wanted to visit the Church of Our Lady which houses The Madonna and Child by Michelangelo. This world-famous white marble statue is the only work by Michelangelo that left Italy during his lifetime. But the church closed at 5:00 so we are out of luck.
We have to settle for viewing this poster.
We order a waffle with dark chocolate to share before the long drive back to our bnb. It had a bit too much chocolate for us, but was still delicious.
The Sycamore/ Plane trees are starting to show their fall colours.
There are very few owl depictions in prehistoric cave art. We get to see one here.
More tree lined roads on the way home…the leaves look golden in the setting sun.
This is one of the entrance gates to the old city of Carcassone.
This is mostly an opportunity to see the fortifications that make this citadel so unique.
Carcassonne is now considered to be the largest and best conserved medieval fortress in Europe. It is impressive with its set of double walls and ramparts. Both sets of walls and the area between them can be seen in this photo.
There are more than 200 painted and engraved figures in Fonte de Gaume organized into compositions in the four main sections of this 120 meter long cave. We visited all but the narrowest section in the Diverticule teminal and the short cave on the right of the entrance.
The first artworks we see are engravings…some of them were made by the artist using his fingers to mark the soft stone. Rouffignac is famous for its Mammoths. 158 mammoths that have been found on the walls of this cave, this is 30% of all mammoth representations in prehistoric cave art. Yet, curiously, there have been few mammoth bones found in this area. We also see cave bear claw marks all over the walls. The parallel vertical lines below this mammoth are from a cave bear scratching his claws on the cave walls.
I was surprised to see that almost everyone in the group turned towards our guide when he started talking and they stopped looking at the drawings! Really? Couldn’t they have listened but keep looking a the artwork above our heads? It seemed such a waste to be standing here and ignoring these ancient drawings. One very interesting drawing of a mammoth showed its anal flap. Sorry, no photo of that one. Yes, this is a flap that covers the mammoth’s anus to keep it warm. Only someone who had very close contact with a mammoth would know about this detail. This fact was used to help authenticate these drawings, as they were thought to be modern fakes when they were first discovered..
Once we are inside the cave there are even more stairs…
The displays here shows some pictures of cave exploration…not for me..it looks cold, wet and exhausting and rather frightening as well. In all, 42 kilometres of galleries have been mapped by speleologists but there are still more areas that have not yet been explored.
And there is another lake, twenty metres above the river! Mind boggling! Lake Superior (Upper Lake), is crystal clear and an incredible aqua colour. The round tan shaped formations on the right hand of the photo form a dam that holds the water in this lake.
“A remarkable stalagmite lies above the lake. It is nicknamed the Pile d’Assiettes (Pile of Plates) because of its surprising resemblance to stacked-up china. It is a typical high-roof stalagmite formed when such a structure exceeds several tens of metres in height. Drops of water fall to the ground at great speed and explode, depositing limestone in circles and giving rise to very flattened formations.” ~ 
I am quite relieved that we do not have to climb these steps!
One last photo in the cave.
In 2016, a new replica, Lascaux IV, was opened to replace Lascaux II. It is adjacent to the original cave and offers an even more authentic experience than Lascaux II, with changes in air pressure, along with a series of atmospheric cave scents and sounds. 
Once again no photos allowed however there is an interpretive area that has more replica displays and we can take photos there.
The last room we entered had huge animations which travels across three walls and sometimes over the floor and ceiling as well. I particularly liked this one which shows mammoths from the Rouffignac Cave, which we hope to visit later this week. 
There are usually 5 monks and 7 nuns who live at the abbey and there are only 25-30 people who actually live on Mont Saint Michel. We sat and listened to part of the mass, from the side of the church. The singing was really lovely and I found it interesting that the nuns and the priest sat on the floor of the church during the service.
There are so many interesting doors in this abbey.
There are so many smaller rooms and interesting spaces to be explored. This one is off the side of the crypt.
When the Abbey was used solely as a prison in the 1800’s, this huge wheel was was used to haul supplies up to the abbey. Prisoners walking inside the wheel were able to raise and lower a cart along a stone ladder inclined along the rock wall. 
We hear shrieks and peals of laughter and realize that is is coming from the people out walking on the sands now that the tide is out. Some of them are thigh deep in the water! There are a lot of people out there, some of them way off in the distance. Thanks, but I am happy to pass walking in mud and cold water.
Bob took interesting photos of the inside and outside view of these two stained glass windows.
…interesting details…
…crooked roof lines…
This is another of those very long, very fast moving escalators. We wonder why the metro is so far underground? A
These fellows gave a little preview of an evening performance in one of the many churches in Prague.
St. 
Here is a close up of the entrance to the bridge in the photo above. Just a few people! Very crowded but such great people watching, which is one of my favourite pass-times. 
The bridge offers a great view of the Prague Castle on the hill. 
As well as views of some of the other bridges along the Vltava River. 
Touching this statue is said to bring good luck and ensure a return visit to Prague. There are 30 statues on this 516 metres long and almost 10 metres wide Gothic bridge.
The sun was setting as we leave the bridge.
On the way home we peek into a Thai massage studio. I wanted to give this a try but we somehow ran out of time.
Prague is famous for its marionettes. Most of the ones we see are obviously made for tourists and not that great but I find this window display of really beautiful marionettes. They had really ‘beautiful’ price tags too!
There are lots of shops selling wooden products.
We see Nemo every time we walk along Wenceslas Square.
The streets are jam-packed with people tonight. It is St. Wenceslas Day today which is also called Statehood Day and is a holiday.
Interesting to see a blacksmith working in the square.
These pastries are sold everywhere in Prague. They are call Trdelník (which means a hollowed out log) and they are made by wrapping layers and layers of dough on a cylindrical spit. It is then baked on an open fire and dusted with cinnamon sugar and crushed nuts. They look yummy just like that but many shops fill them with ice cream and all sorts of fancy toppings. Unfortunately they are not gluten free…so none for me.
These little sculptures in the store window appealed, but they are too big and heavy to buy so I settle for a picture.
trudymason.com 