The small shopmen, and the men and women of the markets, all look and talk Flemish, and the environment is everywhere as distinctly Flemish as if one were standing on one of the little bridges which cross the waterways of Ghent or Bruges.
The men and women are broad-bodied and coarse-featured,—quite different from the Dutch, one remarks,—and they move slowly and with apparent difficulty in their clumsy sabots and heavy clothing. The houses round about are tall and slim, and mostly in that state of antiquity and decay which we like to think is artistic.
Such is Flemish Brussels. Even in the Flemish part, the city has none of that winsome sympathetic air which usually surrounds a quaint mediæval bourg. Rather it gives one the impression that old traditions are all but dead and that it is mere improvidence and laisser-aller that allows them to exist.
Flemish Brussels is picturesque enough, but it is squalid, except for the magnificent Hôtel de Ville, which stands to-day in all the glory that it did when Charles V. of Spain ruled the destinies of the country.
It was in the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville that Alva gloated over the flowing blood of his victims as it ran from the scaffold.
The churches of Brussels, as might be supposed from the historical importance of the city in the past, are numerous and celebrated, at least they are characteristically Flemish in much of their belongings, though the great cathedral of Ste. Gudule itself is Gothic of the unmistakable French variety.
Brussels, its cathedrals, its Hôtel de Ville, its Cloth Hall, and its Corporation or Guild Houses, and many more splendid architectural sites and scenes are all powerful attractions for sightseers.
We went from Brussels to Ghent, forty-eight kilometres, and still over pavé. The bicyclist is better catered for, he has cinder side-paths almost all over Belgium and accordingly he should enjoy his touring in occidental and oriental Flanders even more than the automobilist.
Ghent was one day a seaport of rank, much greater rank than that of to-day, for only a sort of sea-going canal-boat, a chaland or a caboteur, ever comes up the canals to the wharves.
Ghent is a great big town, but it does not seem in the least like a city in spite of its hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Its churches, its belfry, its château, and its museum are the chief sights for tourists—automobilists and others. We visited them all after lunch, which was eaten (and paid for at Paris prices) at the Hôtel de la Poste, and covered another forty-six kilometres of pavé, before we turned in for the night at Bruges' Hôtel du Sablon. There are others, but the Hôtel du Sablon at Bruges was modest in its price, efficient in its service, and excellent in its catering. The chief delicacy of the menu here is the mossel. One eats mussels (mossels) in Belgium—if he will—and it's hard for one to escape them. They are moules in France, mossels in Belgium and Holland, and mussels in England. They are a sea food which has never tickled the American palate; but, after many refusals and much resentment, we ate them—and found them good.