We got enough candy to necessitate a trip back to the
room and its little fridge in the closet.

Time to continue our day. As we walked down into the
market square, it started to rain in the famous Brugse
way, so people were scurrying around bumping into each
other, fumbling with malfunctioning umbrellas or
desperately looking for shelter. After a number of
short blind sprints we ended up a few blocks southwest
of where we wanted to be and found another chocolate
haven including Leonidas, Neuhaus, and many off-brands.
Down a few blocks is the big touristy Duman store, which
offers tastings, hot chocolate, snacks, and so on but in
a more comemrcial setting than the original location.
Luckily we were all chocolated out.

Eventually we made it to our destination, the Groeninge
Museum, the collection of course focusing on Bruges
painters first and other Flemings second. Luckily these
included Memling and Jan (and his brother Hubert) Van Eyck.
Also there were a couple important Bosches, including the
famous Last Judgment. After this period, there was a
severe falloff, perhaps corresponding to the loss of
importance of the city itself, exemplified by competent
but backward-looking and less exciting artists such as
Ambrosius Benson and the Pourbus family.

The 19th and 20th century stuff was mostly pretty boring,
though there was a Delvaux (famous Belgian painter of
skinny naked ladies) and a Magritte (famous Belgian painter
of silliness), typical, not earthshaking.

Part of the museum is the so-called Arentshuis, which holds
a large collection of the multifaceted Bruges-born British
artist Frank Brangwyn, who moves me not at all, but whatever,
he's a sort of favorite son here, giving some relatively
modern cachet to a decadent old cultural mecca.

It cleared up finally, and at closing time at the Arentshuis
we wandered up to yet another chocolate neighborhood, this
one home to the very famous Chocolate Line, which turned out
to be very touristy and not so appealing; we'd had enough
anyway and escaped to the unfashionable but welcoming Chocolate
Jungle near the hotel, where we had a refresher, Bonnie a glass
of red wine and myself a cold chocolate (dark), quite good.

At some point we decided not to have dinner but rather just
a chocolate bar and a drink. We inquired of the desk guy
about a glass of wine, but he couldn't find an open bottle
and suggested we just use the lobby vending machine, which
we did. I got a Brugse Zot blonde, rather like the stuff
I'd had the other day, only lighter and wimpier, and she a
Heritage rouge, which was a Syrahish Pays d'Ocish wine from
Patriarche - at E5 for a split from a vending machine it was
kind of exorbitant.
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
* Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.FIDOSYSOP.ORG (1:123/140)