Bruges, Canals and Carillions

 

At seven o’clock there was blue sky and sunshine but it had turned cooler with a stiff breeze from the sea blowing across the fields and into the garden of the gîte.  We were driving to neighbouring Belgium today to visit the town of Bruges in the north of the country and by the time we had packed the car and set off there were big spots of rain falling on the windscreen.  This didn’t last long and it was one of those days when there were different weather conditions in all directions and it was a bit of a lottery about what we were likely to get.  It was about a hundred kilometres to drive and on the way we passed through a variety of different weather fronts so we were unsure of what to expect when we arrived.

We needn’t have worried because as we parked the car the sun came out and the skies turned a settled shade of blue and without a map we let instinct guide us down cobbled streets towards the city centre.  I had visited Bruges before in 1981 so I thought I knew what I was looking for but over the years I must have got mixed up because the place looked nothing like I remembered it.  I knew that we were looking for a large square and I had in mind something classical like St Marks in Venice so I was surprised when we reached the famous market square to find nothing like that at all.

Belgium became an independent European State on 4^th October 1930, the Year of Revolutions and Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium.  In the middle ages, thanks to the wool trade, it was one of the most important cities in Europe and the historic city centre is an important UNESCO World Heritage site because most of its medieval architecture is intact. The Church of Our Lady has a hundred and twenty metre high brick spire making it one of the world’s highest brick towers. The sculpture Madonna and Child, which can be seen in the transept, is believed to be Michelangelo’s only sculpture to have left Italy within his lifetime and the most famous landmark is its thirteenth century belfry, housing a municipal carillon comprising forty eight bells where the city still employs a full-time carillonneur, who gives free concerts on a regular basis.  The Carillion is a feature of Northern France and the Low Countries and the Belfries of Belgium and France is a group of 56 historical buildings designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Site. The city is also famous for its picturesque waterways and along with other canal based northern cities, such as Amsterdam in the Netherlands; it is sometimes referred to as “The Venice of the North”.

We really needed more time to appreciate all of this but the price to be paid for convenient close to the centre parking was that we were restricted to just two hours.  Even though I didn’t remember it quite like this the city square was delightful, fully pedestrianised except for the odd horse and carriage and surrounded by bars and cafés all around the perimeter.  We liked the look of the Bruges Tavern which had tables surrounded by pretty flowers and a vacant table with a good view of the square.  The official language in this part of Belgium is Flemish, which is similar to Dutch and the man who came to take our order identified immediately that we were English and spoke to us in that delightful  lilting sing-song voice that Dutch and Belgian people have when they speak English.  He made us feel welcome and we enjoyed a glass of beer sitting in the sunshine.

The girls wanted to shop again so whilst they went off in the direction of the main shopping street we finished our drinks and then took a leisurely walk around the square overlooked by brightly painted houses with Dutch style gables and facades and then disappeared down the warren of quiet side streets that had something interesting to stop for around every corner.  Making our way back to the car we stopped in another, more modern, large square for a second drink where the service was slow and there was an amusing exchange between a flustered waitress and an impatient diner. ‘Alright, alright, the food is coming’ the waitress snapped when she was asked a third time when it would be served.  Our beer took a long time to come as well but we thought it best not to complain.

As we left Bruges to drive back towards Boulogne the sun disappeared underneath a blanket of cloud and we drove through intermittent showers along a road cluttered with heavy trucks all making their way to and from the Channel ports.  This was not an especially interesting journey through a flat featureless landscape and although we had taken our passports with us there wasn’t even any real indication that that we had passed from Belgium back to France except for a small EU sign that that seemed hopelessly inadequate and could be easily missed.

Gondola Ride in Venice

In 2003 I visited Venice for the second time and on 13^th April took a ride through the canals in a gondola.  At €80 for fifty minutes it was ridiculously expensive of course but it was something that had to be done and to be fair to the gondoliers, a boat costs about €20,000 for a traditional hand-built wooden gondola and has a life expectancy of only about twenty years. They need to earn the bulk of their annual income in a few short tourist months and the cost of living is high in Venice because it is an expensive city in one of Italy’s wealthiest provinces.

Close to our hotel, the Locanda Orseola on the Orseola canal, there was a sort of gondola terminus where rows of boats and their rowers were waiting for business.  We selected a sleek black one (actually like a Ford Model T they are all black) with elaborate paintings on the interior and black velvet seats with purple brocade and a gondolier in traditional black and white hooped shirt and straw hat with a red ribbon and after we had settled into our seats we set off into the labyrinth of tiny canals slipping quietly through the water as the gondolier expertly paddled his way through the pea green waters.  The oar or rèmo is held in an oar lock known as a fórcola which is a critical component of the boat with a  complicated shape allowing several positions of the oar for slow forward rowing, powerful forward rowing, turning, slowing down, rowing backwards, and stopping.

The profession of gondolier is controlled by a guild, which issues a limited number of licenses granted after long periods of training and apprenticeship, and a major comprehensive exam which tests knowledge of Venetian history and landmarks, foreign language skills, and practical skills in handling the gondola typically necessary in the tight spaces of Venetian canals.

Our friendly guide took us first through some narrow back canals and at a blind bend collided with another going in the other direction and then we joined a gondola jam as he maneuvered into a busier canal heading for the Grand Canal.  The small canals were curiously quiet without pavements or people as we passed by the back doors of mansions, shops and restaurants but the main canals were busier and lined with cafés and restaurants and with crowds of people crossing the narrow bridges every few metres or so. At water level there was a slightly different perspective to the buildings and down here we could see the exposed brickwork and the crumbling pastel coloured stucco giving in to the constant corrosive assault of the waters of the lagoon.

Our boat was in perfect condition and lovingly cared for from aft to stern.  Gondolas are hand made using eight different types of wood, fir, oak, cherry, walnut, elm, mahogany, larch and lime and are composed of two hundred and eighty pieces. The oars are made of beech wood. The left side of the gondola is made longer than the right side and this asymmetry causes the gondola to resist the tendency to turn toward the left at the forward stroke from the right hand side of the boat.

From the busy canal San Luca we emerged into the Grand Canal where the gondolier had to have his wits about him as he competed for space with the Vaporetto (the water bus service), the motor boat taxis and dozens more gondola each one full of gaping wide eyed tourists admiring the elaborate mansions and palaces that make this Venice’s most exclusive area.  The ride continued past rows of gaily coloured mooring poles and  under the famous Rialto bridge and past the fish market and then with the clock ticking away the boat was turned off the Grand Canal into the canal San Salvador and the boatman expertly threaded his way back towards San Marco and the Orseola canal where the ride came to an end.  We had enjoyed it.

Venice or Korčula, Birthplace of Marco Polo?

In April 2005 I visited Venice for the fourth time.  The city of Venice is generally regarded to be the birth place of Marco Polo – but is it?

The Italian city is fairly insistent that it is the birthplace of the explorer and as well as restaurants and hotels has even named its airport after the great traveller, but if you speak to the people of Korčula they are equally adamant that he was born there in a house in the centre of the town.  Interestingly however neither city seems sufficiently confident of their conflicting claims to provide the funds to commission a statue of the famous traveller.

When I visited Croatia in 2009 I visited the island of Korčula and one of the main visitor sites in the town is the Marco Polo house.   Korčula is compact (small)  and after walking around the old town several times we were saving a visit to the house and museum for as long as possible so when we had done everything else that we could we delayed it a few moments longer by stopping at a café bar outside the cathedral where we sat under red umbrellas and it was a good job we did because while we there it started to spit with rain.

So now we went to the Marco Polo house and negotiated our way through the gift shop outside and paid our admission fee to enter the house.

Marco Polo was born in 1254 (somewhere) and was an explorer who wrote ‘Il Milione’, which introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst together with his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, he voyaged through Asia and met Kublai Khan. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia and travelled almost twenty-five thousand kilometres, a journey which took them nearly twenty-five years.

For his troubles Marco was accused of being a fraud and imprisoned, and whilst incarcerated dictated his stories to a fellow prisoner and cell mate.  Even today suspicion continues and some historians think it more likely that the Venetian merchant adventurer picked up second-hand stories of China, Japan and the Mongol Empire from Persian merchants whom he met on the shores of the Black Sea – thousands of miles short of the Orient.  

In a book published in 1995, “Did Marco Polo Go to China?”, Frances Wood, the head of the Chinese section at the British Library,  argued that he probably did not make it beyond the Black Sea.

He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married and had three children. He died in 1324, and was buried in San Lorenzo in Italy.

The house is due to be turned into a museum sometime soon but at the moment it has to be said that it is a bit of a disappointment.  There are no exhibits and no rooms to show them in if there were, only a succession of uneven stairs that lead to the top of a tower with an average sort of view over the town.

On the plus side the admission price did include a postcard of Marco Polo (above) – each!

Three Visits to Venice

While there are no historical records that deal directly with the origins of Venice, tradition and the available evidence have led several historians to agree that the original population of Venice consisted of refugees from Roman cities near Venice and from the undefended countryside, who were fleeing successive waves of invasions from the north.

The traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Jacopo at the islet of Rialto and given the date of 25^th March 421.

Venice is a city known both for tourism and for industry, and is the capital of the region Veneto. The name is derived from the ancient tribe of Veneti that inhabited the region in Roman times. The city historically was the capital of a powerful and successful sea-born independent city-state.

Venice has been known as the “La Dominante”, “Serenissima”, “Queen of the Adriatic”, “City of Water”, “City of Masks”, “City of Bridges”, “The Floating City”, and “City of Canals”.  It stretches across one hundred and seventeen small islands in the marshy Venetian Lagoon along the Adriatic Sea and the saltwater lagoon stretches along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po (south) and the Piave (north) Rivers.

I first visited Venice in April 2002 and stayed at the Albergo San Marco near Saint Marks Square.

There was perfect spring weather and I was captivated by the sights and sounds of the city which seemed to belong more correctly to a theme park than a thriving industrial sea port city. We did the sights of course, the Cathedral, Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge and the labyrinth of canals lined with palaces and museums.

Wrapped up in the atmosphere of the place we paid £30 for a drink and a sandwich in St Mark’s Square and £80 for a ride in a gondola.  Cheaper amusement was found on the City’s water buses, the Vaporetto, including a reasonably priced ticket to visit the nearby island of Burano.

I liked the place so much that I returned twelve months later and stayed at a fabulous boutique hotel, the Locanda Orseola which was right in the middle of the San Marco area and had a room directly overlooking the Orseola canal.  I am not sure how I managed to get the bargain price, probably because it was a family room for all four of us but this was one of the nicest hotels that I have stayed in.

We did all of the same things again including the Vaporetto trip to Burano where all of the houses are painted in gay colours so that fishermen could spot them from the open sea when returning home (or so the story goes).  The weather was glorious again and we ate lunch by the Rialto Bridge and watched the hectic  traffic on the Grand Canal and dinner at the Ristorante da Raffaele next to the quieter dell’alero  canal where gondolas glided gracefully by and the water lapped gently against the bricks of the walls.

Two visits to Venice was still not enough however and I returned again in 2005 and this time stayed at the hotel Anastasia which although only three star was situated in a quiet square, the Corte Barozzi and although not overlooking a the water directly from the room we could hear the gentle rhythm of the canal di San Moise just around the corner from the square.  We did exactly the same things of course but there was no mad rush to cram things in this time around so the experience was altogether more leisurely.

I haven’t been back to Venice again since but after seven years I think it might be nearly time to go and visit one more time.

A Life in a Year – 4th October, Bruges, Canals and Carillions

 

At seven o’clock there was blue sky and sunshine but it had turned cooler with a stiff breeze from the sea blowing across the fields and into the garden of the gîte.  We were driving to neighbouring Belgium today to visit the town of Bruges in the north of the country and by the time we had packed the car and set off there were big spots of rain falling on the windscreen.  This didn’t last long and it was one of those days when there were different weather conditions in all directions and it was a bit of a lottery about what we were likely to get.  It was about a hundred kilometres to drive and on the way we passed through a variety of different weather fronts so we were unsure of what to expect when we arrived.

We needn’t have worried because as we parked the car the sun came out and the skies turned a settled shade of blue and without a map we let instinct guide us down cobbled streets towards the city centre.  I had visited Bruges before in 1981 so I thought I knew what I was looking for but over the years I must have got mixed up because the place looked nothing like I remembered it.  I knew that we were looking for a large square and I had in mind something classical like St Marks in Venice so I was surprised when we reached the famous market square to find nothing like that at all.

Belgium became an independent European State on 4^th October 1930, the Year of Revolutions and Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium.  In the middle ages, thanks to the wool trade, it was one of the most important cities in Europe and the historic city centre is an important UNESCO World Heritage site because most of its medieval architecture is intact. The Church of Our Lady has a hundred and twenty metre high brick spire making it one of the world’s highest brick towers. The sculpture Madonna and Child, which can be seen in the transept, is believed to be Michelangelo’s only sculpture to have left Italy within his lifetime and the most famous landmark is its thirteenth century belfry, housing a municipal carillon comprising forty eight bells where the city still employs a full-time carillonneur, who gives free concerts on a regular basis.  The Carillion is a feature of Northern France and the Low Countries and the Belfries of Belgium and France is a group of 56 historical buildings designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Site. The city is also famous for its picturesque waterways and along with other canal based northern cities, such as Amsterdam in the Netherlands; it is sometimes referred to as “The Venice of the North”.

We really needed more time to appreciate all of this but the price to be paid for convenient close to the centre parking was that we were restricted to just two hours.  Even though I didn’t remember it quite like this the city square was delightful, fully pedestrianised except for the odd horse and carriage and surrounded by bars and cafés all around the perimeter.  We liked the look of the Bruges Tavern which had tables surrounded by pretty flowers and a vacant table with a good view of the square.  The official language in this part of Belgium is Flemish, which is similar to Dutch and the man who came to take our order identified immediately that we were English and spoke to us in that delightful  lilting sing-song voice that Dutch and Belgian people have when they speak English.  He made us feel welcome and we enjoyed a glass of beer sitting in the sunshine.

The girls wanted to shop again so whilst they went off in the direction of the main shopping street we finished our drinks and then took a leisurely walk around the square overlooked by brightly painted houses with Dutch style gables and facades and then disappeared down the warren of quiet side streets that had something interesting to stop for around every corner.  Making our way back to the car we stopped in another, more modern, large square for a second drink where the service was slow and there was an amusing exchange between a flustered waitress and an impatient diner. ‘Alright, alright, the food is coming’ the waitress snapped when she was asked a third time when it would be served.  Our beer took a long time to come as well but we thought it best not to complain.

As we left Bruges to drive back towards Boulogne the sun disappeared underneath a blanket of cloud and we drove through intermittent showers along a road cluttered with heavy trucks all making their way to and from the Channel ports.  This was not an especially interesting journey through a flat featureless landscape and although we had taken our passports with us there wasn’t even any real indication that that we had passed from Belgium back to France except for a small EU sign that that seemed hopelessly inadequate and could be easily missed.

A Life in a Year – 13th April, Gondola Ride in Venice

In 2003 I visited Venice for the second time and on 13^th April took a ride through the canals in a gondola.  At €80 for fifty minutes it was ridiculously expensive of course but it was something that had to be done and to be fair to the gondoliers, they invest a great deal in their boats, about €20,000 for a traditional hand-built wooden gondola with a life expectancy of about twenty years. They need to earn the bulk of their annual income in a few short tourist months and the cost of living is high in Venice because it is an expensive city in one of Italy’s wealthiest provinces.

Close to our hotel, the Locanda Orseola on the Orseola canal, there was a sort of gondola terminus where rows of boats and their rowers were waiting for business.  We selected a sleek black one (actually like a Ford Model T they are all black) with elaborate paintings on the interior and black velvet seats with purple brocade and a gondolier in traditional black and white hooped shirt and straw hat with a red ribbon and after we had settled into our seats we set off into the labyrinth of tiny canals slipping quietly through the water as the gondolier expertly paddled his way through the pea green waters.  The oar or rèmo is held in an oar lock known as a fórcola which is a critical component of the boat with a of a complicated shape allowing several positions of the oar for slow forward rowing, powerful forward rowing, turning, slowing down, rowing backwards, and stopping.

The profession of gondolier is controlled by a guild, which issues a limited number of licenses granted after periods of training and apprenticeship, and a major comprehensive exam which tests knowledge of Venetian history and landmarks, foreign language skills, and practical skills in handling the gondola typically necessary in the tight spaces of Venetian canals.

Our friendly guide took us first through some narrow back canals and at a blind bend collided with another going in the other direction and then we joined a gondola jam as he maneuvered into a busier canal heading for the Grand Canal.  The small canals were curiously quiet without pavements or people as we passed by the back doors of mansions, shops and restaurants but the main canals were busier lined with cafés and restaurants and with crowds of people crossing the narrow bridges every few metres or so. At water level there was a slightly different perspective to the buildings and down here we could see the exposed brickwork and the crumbling pastel coloured stucco giving in to the constant assault of the waters of the lagoon.

Our boat was in perfect condition and lovingly cared for from aft to stern.  Gondolas are hand made using eight different types of wood, fir, oak, cherry, walnut, elm, mahogany, larch and lime and are composed of two hundred and eighty pieces. The oars are made of beech wood. The left side of the gondola is made longer than the right side and this asymmetry causes the gondola to resist the tendency to turn toward the left at the forward stroke from the right hand side of the boat.

From the busy canal San Luca we emerged into the Grand Canal where the gondolier had to have his wits about him as he competed for space with the Vaporetto (the water bus service), the motor boat taxis and dozens more gondola each one full of gaping wide eyed tourists admiring the elaborate mansions and palaces that make this Venice’s most exclusive area.  The ride continued past rows of gaily coloured mooring poles and  under the famous Rialto bridge and past the fish market and then with the clock ticking away the boat was turned off the Grand Canal into the canal San Salvador and the boatman expertly threaded his way back towards San Marco and the Orseola canal where the ride came to an end.  We had enjoyed it.

A Life in a Year – 5th April, Venice, Birthplace of Marco Polo?

On April 5^th 2005 I visited Venice for the fourth time.  Venice is the birth place of Marco Polo – or is it? 

When I visited Croatia in 2009 I visited the island of Korčula and one of the main visitor sites in the town is the Marco Polo house.   Korčula is compact (small)  and we were saving a visit for as long as possible so when we had done everything else that we could we delayed it a few moments longer by stopping at a café bar outside the cathedral where we sat under red umbrellas and it was a good job we did because while we there it started to spit with rain.

So now we went to the Marco Polo house.  Venice is insistent that it is the birthplace of Marco Polo and as well as restaurants and hotels has even named its airport after the great traveller, but if you speak to the people of Korčula they are adamant that he was born here in a house in the centre of the town.  We negotiated our way through the gift shop outside and paid our admission fee to enter the house.

Marco Polo was born in 1254 (somewhere) and was an explorer who wrote ‘Il Milione’, which introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst together with his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, he voyaged through Asia and met Kublai Khan. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia and travelled almost twenty-five thousand kilometres, a journey which took them nearly twenty-five years.  For his troubles Marco was accused of being a fraud and imprisoned, and whilst incarcerated dictated his stories to a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married and had three children. He died in 1324, and was buried in San Lorenzo in Italy. 

The house is due to be turned into a museum sometime soon but at the moment it has to be said that it is a bit of a disappointment.  There are no exhibits and no rooms to show them in if there were, only a succession of uneven stairs that lead to the top of a tower with an average sort of view over the town.  On the plus side the admission price did include a postcard of Marco Polo – each!

A Life in a Year – 25th March, The Founding of Venice and Three Visits

While there are no historical records that deal directly with the origins of Venice, tradition and the available evidence have led several historians to agree that the original population of Venice consisted of refugees from Roman cities near Venice and from the undefended countryside, who were fleeing successive waves of invasions from the north. The traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Jacopo at the islet of Rialto and given the date of 25^th March 421.

Venice is a city known both for tourism and for industry, and is the capital of the region Veneto. The name is derived from the ancient tribe of Veneti that inhabited the region in Roman times. The city historically was the capital of a powerful and successful sea-born independent city-state. Venice has been known as the “La Dominante”, “Serenissima”, “Queen of the Adriatic”, “City of Water”, “City of Masks”, “City of Bridges”, “The Floating City”, and “City of Canals”.  It stretches across one hundred and seventeen small islands in the marshy Venetian Lagoon along the Adriatic Sea and the saltwater lagoon stretches along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po (south) and the Piave (north) Rivers.

I first visited Venice in April 2002 and stayed at the Albergo San Marco near Saint Marks Square. There was perfect spring weather and I was captivated by the sights and sounds of the city which seemed to belong more correctly to a theme park than a thriving industrial sea port city. We did the sights of course, the Cathedral, Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge and the labyrinth of canals lined with palaces and museums. Wrapped up in the atmosphere of the place we paid £30 for a drink and a sandwich in St Mark’s Square and £80 for a ride in a gondola.  Cheaper amusement was found on the City’s water buses, the Vaporetto, including a reasonably priced ticket to visit the nearby island of Burano.

I liked the place so much that I returned twelve months later and stayed at a fabulous boutique hotel, the Locanda Orseola which was right in the middle of the San Marco area and had a room directly overlooking the Orseola canal.  I am not sure how I managed to get the bargain price, probably because it was a family room for all four of us but this was one of the nicest hotels that I have stayed in.  We did all of the same things again including the Vaporetto trip to Burano where all of the houses are painted in gay colours so that fishermen could spot them from the open sea when returning home (or so the story goes).  The weather was glorious again and we ate lunch by the Rialto Bridge and watched the hectic  traffic on the Grand Canal and dinner at the Ritorante da Raffaele next to the quieter dell’alero  canal where gondolas glided gracefully by and the water lapped gently against the bricks of the walls.

Two visits to Venice was still not enough however and I returned again in 2005 and this time stayed at the hotel Anastasia which although only three star was situated in a quiet square, the Corte Barozzi and although not overlooking a the water directly from the room we could hear the gentle rhythm of the canal di San Moise just around the corner from the square.  We did exactly the same things of course but there was no mad rush to cram things in this time around so the experience was altogether more leisurely.

I haven’t been back to Venice again since but after six years I think it might be nearly time to go and visit one more time.