Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2026 Part 1: Middelburgh & Bruges – May 3, 2026

Where We Spend The Day In Medieval Bruges And Manage To Not Buy Any Souvenirs

Yesterday’s optional (i.e. paid for) tours of Brussels and Antwerp were rated as “Moderate”, and they were – lots of walking and lots of cobblestones. Typically the included excursions (i.e. “free”) have a “leisure” group for the moderate tours. The “leisure” group walks more slowly and avoids steps, which sometimes means that some parts of the excursion aren’t visited. But that’s ok – the goal is to maximize my experience within my physical limitations.

So I’d been a little concerned about the “Medieval Bruges” excursion ever since we booked it months ago. There would be no getting around hours of cobblestones and trying to keep up.

To our surprise, there was a “leisure” group for “Medieval Bruges”! What a relief.

One thing about the leisure groups is discovering there are people on the ship who have worse mobility problems than I do. Suddenly I’m the speedster!

It was a 90 minute drive from Middelburg to Bruges, raining most of the way. At least I remembered to bring a rain jacket. The tour guide who was with us on the bus would not be the guide for the leisure group – he would meet us at Bruges. I asked the bus tour guide if there would be a bathroom break when we arrived in Bruges, considering it’s a 90 minute drive. I felt like he looked at me like I had 2 heads and 4 arms. He said I should ask our Bruges tour guide. Ok? Why was this a big deal?

When we arrived at the bus parking in Bruges, there was a public bathroom right there at the information center, something the bus tour guide surely knew. So he could have said, “Sure, it’s not a problem – there’s a public bathroom at the bus parking.” As we were exiting the bus, he kept mentioning that everybody should let their tour guid know if they need to use the bathroom before the tour started. I felt like I was in kindergarten.

Amazingly enough, there was a long line at the bathroom, because the majority of the people on the three buses were standing in it.

Our little leisure group had a couple of us with mobility aids (me with my chair and a guy with a rollator). Plus we had a few people who just needed to walk slowly. Many hearing aids, including our tour guide, which meant quite a bit of repetition of questions, answers, and instructions – the tour guide to us and from us to the tour guide, because he definitely didn’t hear well, even with the hearing aids. Or maybe he was just ignoring some of the questions, who knows.

The first story he told was the legend of Minna and Stromberg: young lovers who weren’t allowed to marry, because Minna’s father wanted her to marry someone else. When Stromberg went off to war, Minna’s father forced to marry the other guy. So she ran away from home. Her lover Stromberg found her in the woods, dying. He buried her in the woods, and created a dam on the river creating the Minnewater or Lovers Lake.

After we crossed the bridge into medieval Bruges, the tour guide talked about a community of lay women living a religious life called beguins. The beguinage in Brussels was started in 1276 and lasted until 1976. The women were all unmarried and had to work to earn their keep, but were free to go at any time – most of the time they left when they were married.

The conversation about the Beguins was almost circular. The guide explained that the women were lay women who wanted to live a holy life, but didn’t want to be nuns forever, they worked for a living and left if/when they got married. Possibly because there were photos of the women dressed in their Sunday clothes that looked like a nun’s habit, there were people in our group (most of them) who kept referring to beguins as “nuns” and couldn’t figure out how nuns could get married or why they had jobs. The tour guide became a little frustrated after a while, and we just had to move on to the next thing.

Which wasn’t easy because we kept passing by beguinage buildings that, of course, triggered another round of explanations as to what a beguin was. Then someone asked why there weren’t anymore beguins (the community closed with the death of the last beguin in 1976), and the circular conversation started again, only this time it included the apparently confusing fact that women no longer have an interest in being sequestered in a lay holy community.

Pasterie van de Begijnhofparochie – entrance to the beguinage

The next story involves why there are swans in Bruges.

Though most likely swans have always been in the area, these are the key points of the story (per Google):

Maximilian of Austria was imprisoned in Bruges by local townspeople. He witnessed the torture and execution of his advisor, Pieter Lanchals, who was despised by the locals.
In retaliation, Maximilian forced the city to maintain the “long necks” (swans) on the canals for eternity (note: the Lanchals’ family crest was a white swan)
According to the legend, if the swans die or leave the city, it will face ruin; therefore, the city takes good care of the swans.

As we were walking by, a swan keeper drove up in a small truck, came out and picked up a swan and put it in the truck. The consensus was that the swan was sick and the keeper was bringing it in for a physical exam.

As we continued to sloowwwwly walk our way towards the town square, our tour guide talked a lot about chocolate: there are 65 chocolate shops in Bruges, and 5 of them are professional chocolate makers (i.e. they make their chocolate on the premises of the store).

We stopped by a lace store with a lace bobbin display in the window

I would have liked to have gone back to this store, but we didn’t have enough time. And I’m not sure I’d be able to find it again, anyway.

As we continued to stroll, the conversation shifted as to whether or not a canal ride was included (it was not), and how one would go about doing the canal ride (there’s 5 different canal ride companies within a couple of minutes of each other), but why wasn’t it included in the program (because it’s not, but you can do it on your own, keeping in mind there’s a wait for some of them and you have to take that into account to make sure you arrive at the meeting point on time), followed by questions regarding the meeting point (we haven’t gotten there yet), and most confusing of all: because we’re the “leisure” group, Viking will arrange for taxis to take us back to the bus, but we have to pay for the taxis.

Resulting in a new circular conversation about the taxis – who will call the taxi? (the tour guide) Where will we meet it? (he will show us). Who pays for it (we do). Why doesn’t Viking pay for it? (because it’s not included). What if I don’t have any euros? (we’ll figure it out).

It didn’t help that the tour guide kept waffling between one big taxi for all of us (which Andy and I didn’t see how that would work with two mobility devices), or two taxis for two sets of 4 people.

Which somehow lead us back to the canal boat ride conversation. It’s amazing we made it to the town square at all.

Things we saw along the way.

We finally made it to the meeting spot 3 hours after we left the bus parking lot. The regular tour did it in two hours. We now had 2 hours of free time.

For Andy and myself, that was sufficient time to eat lunch and take a canal boat ride. The company right around the corner from the meeting spot had no wait. We walked right on.

Photos from the canal ride, though I don’t remember what these are in particular. It was hard to understand the boat tour guide/captain over the boat’s motor.

As we walked back around the corner to the meeting spot, the sky opened and it started to pour. The tour guide flagged us down and said we could wait under the overhang instead of at the actual meeting point that was out in the open. He flagged down another couple and had them wait for us while he hunted for the other two couples.

Once all 8 of us were together, the tour guide said he would call the taxi. Once again there was confusion as to who was paying (22 euros for all of us in one cab to be split among us). One person was confused as to why she needed a cab – she said she could walk back! I pointed out it’s 1.5 miles back to the bus in the pouring rain, and we have to be back on the bus by 3:30 p.m. and it’s now 3:10.

But the guy with the rollator didn’t want to get in the minivan cab – I think because of his particular physical issue, it would have been difficult – so we ended up with 4 of us in the minivan and the other 4 in a different cab.

When our cab arrived back at the bus parking lot, our bus was nowhere to be seen. Besides the fact that none of us remembered what the bus looked like.

Never mind – by the time I toddled off to the bathroom and back, the bus had appeared. It was an easy drive back to the ship, which had sailed a few miles on the river from Middelburgh and was now docked in Veere.

A great day, though a bit long, and just a little bit silly. We managed to spend a day in Bruges and not buy any souvenirs.

Tomorrow: Zeeland

Amy & Andy’s Adventure 2026 Part 1: In Search Of Tulips & Windmills: May 2 (Antwerp and Brussels)

Where We Have A Very Long Day, Experience the Joy Of Cobblestones (or not), And Successfully Buy A Haul Of Our Favorite Chocolate.

We needed to on the bus by 8:00 a.m., so it was a super early morning. Plus, the river Scheldt is a tidal river at it was low tide. We had to climb up to the sundeck (deck 4) by stairs, because the elevator is only between decks 2 and 3. Andy had to schlep my transport chair up that flight of stairs and down the ramp.

The drive from Antwerp to Brussels is about 45 minutes, and we had a lot to see. Fortunately, because it was Saturday the traffic was minimal.

The first part of the day was a panoramic driving tour of the city.

First we saw the surroundings of the Royal Family. Belgium declared its independence in 1830, followed by the establishment of its constitutional/parliamentary monarchy, when Leopold I became the first King of the Belgians.

Here are some photos of the area around the Royal residence.

This is the Cathedral to St Michael and St. Gudula, which is a mere 800 years old.

Cathedral to St Michael and St Gudula. We didn’t have the opportunity to go in

One thing I noted when we started our walking tour – frequently there will be a “leisure” option for people who need ot or like to take things more slowly. However, that doesn’t usually happen on the optional (paid for) excursions. This Brussels excursion was no exception. When we got off the bus, and the tour guide saw my transport chair, she immediately asked if we would be able to keep up. Yes, yes, we will.

We started walking towards the city center and the central square. There were modern sidewalks before we entered Gallery; the cobblestones started soon after on the other side.

We arrived at the Grand Place – Brussels’ central square. The buildings around the town square included the Town Hall and Guild houses.

Central Square – that’s our tour guide, Kristin, with the red lollipop

Before we had our free time, we went to see the most famous tourist site in all of Brussels: Manneken Pis. I’ve heard about this statue for many years. My expectations were very low. And yet, apparently, they were not low enough. This photo makes the little boy look way, way, way too big. He’s maybe 18″ tall. Apparently he’s sometimes dressed up in costumes, but not this day.

But we had a more important task to do: buy chocolate. We’ve known for many years that the best chocolate brand is Leonidas (pronounced lee-OOH-nee-dahs). We found the nearest Leonidas store and bought a LOT of chocolate.

Then, of course, right after that, a bathroom break was next up on the priority list. We were able to back track to the public bathroom we had stopped at on our way to the Grand Place. By now, it was getting close to the time to meet our tour guide. We figured that the group would have to pass by this particular spot on the way back to the bus. We tried texting the tour guide to let her know, but she didn’t respond. A couple of people from our group were there sharing a Belgian waffle, and they said they would let the tour guide know where we were. And then of course we had to have a Belgian waffle, too. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo of it before we pretty much inhaled it.

We saw a few more interesting buildings as we continued our panoramic drive around Brussels before we headed back to the ship.

This trash bin has the image of St Michael fighting a dragon

We drove by NATO; the last time Andy was there was over 35 years ago. Since then, a new building was built.

Before we returned to the ship, we did a short drive through Antwerp. This is the Antwerp Law Courts building. The structures on the roof represent the paper cones that French fries are served in – even though French fries were really invented in Belgium.

When we returned to the ship, the tide has started to rise, so we were able to board the ship on deck 3 and avoid the extra flight of stairs.

Because our tour of Brussels overlapped the included walking tour of Antwerp, a separate walking tour of Antwerp was set up just for us starting at 3:00 p.m. But – the cathedral would be closing for the day at 3:00 p.m. for mass. Emily said that people who wanted to see the inside of the cathedral could walk with her at 2:00 p.m. We arrived back at the ship at 1:30 p.m.

This extra walk would be too much for me, but Andy went. He spent about 15 minutes (tops) in the cathedral, taking as many photos as he could before he had to leave to come back to the ship to get me to start the walking tour. Apparently there are several paintings by Paul Rubens in the cathedral, but it doesn’t look like he took photos of any of them.

The original floor of the cathedral down in the basement

When Andy came back from the cathedral, we joined the tour guide to begin the walking tour of Antwerp. This was not a “leisurely” version – keeping up was quite a challenge.

It had been arranged to meet some people who went to see the cathedral at a building called The Stone. It’s a medeival fortress and the oldest building in Antwerp. It’s now a visitor center.

This guy is the Lange Wapper Statue, depicting a legendary giant and trickster from Flemish folklore.

As the tour continued, we were climbing up and down stairs and encountering cobblestones before we hardly went anywhere at all.

This is the Butcher’s Hall building. The Butcher’s guild was a very powerful one.

We continued along more cobblestone streets on the way to the city center’s main square. Our tour guide told us the story of how Antwerp got its name:

The myth says Silvius Brabo killed the nasty giant, cut off his hand and threw it into the Schedlt River. The name “Antwerp” is derived from the Dutch phrase “Hand werpen,” which means to throw a hand. So now you know. The statue in the photo below doesn’t look like it’s in very good shape.

There was another statue of Silvius Brabo throwing the giant’s hand into the river. This one made Brabo look like Lord Farquarh from Shrek.

The myth about the giant said that the only way to escape the giant was to run to stand under a statue of the Virgin Mary, of which there were many scattered on the sides of buildings all over Antwerp.

Antwerp doesn’t lack for churches. This is the Jesuit church.

I think our last stop was in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady, which we don’t seem to have a photo. Maybe this was one too many churches.

However, in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady was this statue in honor of a famous Belgian story, Nello & Patrasche. It’s a very sad story about a boy and his dog, and the boy dies. I’m not clear why this makes for a great story, but here’s the statue.

Fortunately, the walk back to the ship was quick and without cobblestones, except for the very last yards back to the ship. It was amazing, but we had been able to stick with the tour the whole way.

We were exhausted.

Tomorrow: Middelburgh and Bruges