So has everyone else in the Western world. In his achingly funny European travel book “Neither Here Nor There”, Bill Bryson wrote:<\/p>\n
Everything about it is perfect – its cobbled streets, its placid bottle-green canals, its steep-roofed medieval houses, its market squares, its slumbering parks, everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This was in 1990. In 2000, Brugge was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and now the perfect market squares have Subway sandwich shops and Quick Burger shops and seemingly hundreds of shops selling chocolate and lace and wooden shoes (it is in the Flemish \/ Dutch region of Belgium, after all). Certainly less perfect, but still magical. Sadly, I have read that the citizens of Brugge hate the same tourists that many of them now count on for income, for destroying their sleepy, charming fairy village. This doesn’t surprise me – a similar sentiment was quite common on Orcas Island when I lived there, and is prevalent in many tourist areas.<\/p>\n
This doesn’t change the magic here, but it does tarnish it for me, which is selfish and dumb and makes me a little ashamed of myself. It’s strange. I’m here, clearly, as a tourist (as I write this, I’m sitting in the cafe of a hostel catering very much to foreign tourists), but generally don’t feel like one. Since arriving, I have mostly wandered around neighborhoods and back alleys and parks in the various cities I’ve seen, tending to avoid the most obvious tourist areas, but Brugge is so small – and I’m so close – that it’s hard not to stumble onto these areas without even trying.<\/p>\n
I feel like this is an experience I’m going to have often over the coming months. Navigating this internal dichotomy will, I suspect, prove an interesting growth opportunity.<\/p>\n
I expect to be posting a few photos – and maybe videos – that try to capture the beauty of this little gem – in the coming days.<\/p>\n
As always, thanks to everyone who reads and comments and sends me little notes of love and support during my travels. I am so grateful for the chance to live this dream and to have so many people virtually tagging along for the ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am in love, and it makes me hurt. Brugge, Belgium is quite possibly the most beautiful city I have ever seen. I’m staying just three minutes’ walk to the center square, and I’ve walked there three times in the 24 hours I’ve been here so far. I have, for the first time since arriving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}