Popular tourism destination, Bruges, lures visitors to its ice sculptures festival. Visitors can admire an ice statue of Elvis Presley as well as get a drink at an ice bar. The festival ends in the middle of January.
Belgian city of Bruges is hosting the traditional ice sculptures festival. This year’s topic is "Around the World". Sculptures representing thirty countries of the world are kept in white tents at minus 6 degrees Celsius. Thirty sculptors worked on the statues that will be on display until 16 January.
Visitors can see various sculptures such as a lioness from Africa, copies of ancient Egyptian monuments, London’s Big Ben, Indian and Greek gods, cars, bikes as well as a number of celebrities there. According to Cestovanie.sk, famous people are presented there by the ice statue of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley. The festival organizers had to set up special tents with the right type of lighting and get quality ice blocs. The smallest blocks weighted about 250 kilograms while the biggest one weighted more than 1.7 tons.
Since Bruges is a popular tourism destination, the festival has already welcomed tens of thousands of visitors. Apart from admiring the sculptures, tourists can also have a drink at an ice bar. Spirits from different parts of our planet are served there. Customers, however, need to be ready that bartenders leave the bar quite often to warm themselves up outside the icy tents.
The end of the exhibition is usually quite sad as the statues are smashed by jackhammers. It needs to be done because if the organizers let them melt down, the square would be flooded. The smashed pieces are then driven outside of the city.