Day 81: Bruges and Gent

 Today I woke up to a nice sky at "Plopsa Land":

After breakfast I started cycling towards Bruges. The cycling infrastructure in Belgium is much better than in France. You can cycle uninterrupted without constantly stopping to give way to everyone else. So I made some good progress. Most of the landscape was pretty flat and not very exciting.

But todays focus was not on the landscape but on the cities. I arrived in Bruges after about three hours of cycling. Getting into the city was a bit of a hassle since today was the Time Trial of the UCI Road World Championships in cycling. A lot of roads were blocked and the finish was on a central place.

Once I got through all of this I felt like I was in Lüneburg. Many streets are indistinguishable from streets in Lüneburg. Still the inner city is a lot bigger and contains more distinguished buildings.

Entering through one of the city gates

After having seen much of the city and having some lunch I continued to Gent.

Which is in my opinion more impressive than Bruges. Also being a Sunday evening with almost only locals in the citiy (and no bicycle racing) the mood was very different. In two places were public pianos where people could (and did) play for everyone around. At another place there was some live music and people just enjoyed themselves.

The architecture has a lot more gothic elements.

Some people seem to cycle ;)

One of the public pianos inside the funnel

Similar elements, but much more playful than Bruges

The castle is interesting. It is a small castle inside the city. Which sends a strange message. Either you want to defend yourself against you citizens, or you don't care if the city burns as long as you yourself are save. Checking wikipedia results in the first option: "Gravensteen was intended to intimidate the burghers of Ghent who often challenged the counts' authority."

So after a long today I am now going to relax and continue to Antwerpen tomorrow.