This year, my wife Deborah and I were able to travel to Bruges in Belgium and Florence in Italy celebrating our 30th anniversary.
For years, Deborah has been wanting to visit Bruges and Florence – two amazing cities whose heydays were in the 1400s!
We ate amazing chocolates and waffles in Bruges, Belgium and amazing pizza and gelato in Florence, Italy.
In both cities we visited palaces which are now museums and saw lots of art. We aren’t fully enlightened to what makes art great or what makes art a masterpiece so at one point we bought a guide book to tell us which paintings and sculptures were masterpieces. We then took pictures of the paintings whose pictures were in the guidebook. As the one with the guidebook, at one point I realized I could just tell Deborah any painting and she would take its picture. “There! The one with the ducks! There! The one with the all the colors! There! The one with the goats!”
About Bruges:
Due to its strategic location near the North Sea, Bruges was an important trader of its famous textiles. Bruges also pioneered modern finance with one of the first stock exchanges. Wealth flowed in leading to the growth in the city including building known for its Gothic architecture. Artists like Jan van Eyck helped kick off the Northern Renaissance. With political stability and a booming merchant class calling the shots, Bruges thrived as a cultural and economic powerhouse—until its harbor silted up and the spotlight shifted to Antwerp. For a while, though, Bruges was the place to be!
For us we enjoyed the chocolate, the waffles, the museums, the canal, and the restaurants.
Here are some of the videos and images of our epic trip!
