Monday, October 05, 2009

at it like bonobos

Just a quick footnote to the stuff about our trip to Bruges in this earlier post: I meant to mention that we'd stayed in the Bonobo Aparthotel for the three nights we were there. A few things which may be of interest:
  • It's very conveniently located near the centre of the city, almost under the tower of the Church of Our Lady, which unfortunately was clad in some unsightly scaffolding while we were there. Then again if it was keeping it from falling down and killing everyone I suppose it was for the best.
  • You can book the individual apartments either on a completely self-catering basis (as we did) or with the usual hotel-style add-ons like bed-making and breakfast (for a few extra euros).
  • Your hosts Hans and Magda are very welcoming, and speak excellent English, as does pretty much everyone in Bruges. One of the advantages of Bruges for the lazy Anglophone is that there's no expectation that the casual tourist will be able to speak the principal language, i.e. Flemish, so everyone just converses in English by default. Our boat-driver for our sightseeing trip round the canals managed to conduct commentary in English, Dutch (of which Flemish is a dialect) and French, which was quite impressive.
  • I have no idea what the significance of the name "Bonobo" is; clearly it's not as if actual bonobos habitually roam the streets of Bruges, swinging from the lamp-posts, drinking Leffe and eating waffles. It did occur to me to wonder whether perhaps this was a coded reference to the bonobo's legendarily indiscriminate sexual habits (image is from here), and that I should therefore infer that the hotel was a hotbed of Chimay-crazed wife-swapping and mayonnaise-smeared group sex. Sadly not.

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