Europe, day 41: Brugges

Imagine leaving the train station in a city and coming across a lot of bikes. In fact, here's a picture:

A lot of bikes!

Brugges is a very nice city. It's also fairly intact, as it was not Germany or Austria buring WWII. As such, it has a great many churches with beautiful organs and stained glass windows. It's all very ornate, but sometimes seems to run together anyway.

A good view in a good church

Another church, another display.
One of these statues is a Michelangelo.

We headed to a sort of central square, where all the horse-drawn carriages seemed to depart and return. There was also a large tower at one end, which also turned out to be a bell tower: a belfry.

You can climb it, for a fee.

The climb was rather long and tiring. It claims to be 366 steps up from the ground level of the tower's courtyard, but my mind too readily lost count to verify this. It seems right, thought; it's definitely more than 300 from the office to the top, and the office is a full flight of stairs up from the courtyard.

A rewarding view from the belfry

Unfortunately, the bells are now out of tune, so whatever tunes it attempts are difficult to discern.