I woke this morning to the sound of rain, and empty streets.  But as I came back from an errand later, I heard music, and rounding the corner near my hotel, I saw an all-rhythm band dancing as they played.  They were like pied pipers, drawing the crowd behind them as they marched along. Hard not to smile, it was infectious.

There are a lot of families out on bikes, and most stores are closed, it being Sunday.

The streets in this area are alternately wide and accommodating for cars, and then narrow lanes with shops or tables on each side, that turn for no apparent reason, and change names frequently.  It's easy to get lost.

I wish I knew more about a lot of things, and architecture is one of those things.  The Grand Place has some medieval buildings that stand tall like giant decorated cakes, too fragile to touch, so that they almost do not seem real. To better understand the stories behind these buildings would take another lifetime, I think.

In Bruges, I gave up taking photos, unable to give name to any of the statues or even remember the stages of the cross in the churches. And what was the meaning of the raised dots on the spires above the building?  I feel incredibly ignorant, like I slept through a large section of my proper education. I am told that Bruges - that is the medieval buildings and canals, survived only because it was a backwater town, forgotten and undeveloped, and so it avoided the modernization and/or destruction of progress long enough to be appreciated for its antiquity.  The canals had silted in, but have since been restored, and the town's inhabitants mostly ride bicycles rather than drive cars for which the streets were not built.

I am off to Berlin via Cologne early tomorrow. My stopover in Cologne (Koln) should be long enough for lunch and a visit to the famous cathedral.