Ghent We spent six nights in this beautiful, underappreciated gem - also it happened to be during the Ghent Festival | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Our apartment/hotel in Ghent was much nicer than Brussels. Very clean, breakfast included. | We didn't use the kitchen much, just for yogurts and things like that. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Biking is huge in Ghent, it looks as though it's almost as convenient here as in Amsterdam | Playground in Ghent | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
We happened to arrive in Ghent in the middle of the "Ghent Festival" - a music and arts event in Ghent. They had some kids events, too. | Cute small RV that I really liked | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The canal close to our apartment | Really nice seating area just off a bridge we crossed frequently, to get into the old town. | This is about as much of the police as we saw in Ghent. Even though there were huge, huge crowds of people, there were only a few individual police officers around - nothing at all like Brussels. | Rapping out of a window to the crowd | We took one of these tour boats | Scenes from the canal | Castle Gravensteen | Notice the gas mask on this angel | Rabot sluice | This event mystified us. Something like a lottery/raffle, but nobody was writing any of the numbers down, or looking at any papers | On top of Gravensteen Castle. | Peter, posing nicely. I think I promised him extra screen time for good photos. | I saw this foldable canoe from the top of the castle - reminded me of my Orukayak. I looked up the name on the side, it turns out the maker is native to Ghent, and there's a Kickstarter campaign for it! Here's their website: http://onakcanoes.com/ | Lovely strawberries, ready for strawberry waffles | The bridge next to our apartment is raised for boats | We're able to go by on the walking bridge | This is a Bombard, or medieval canon - the Dulle Griet | Streets were packed with revelers, we had a hard time finding a restaurant | So we ate at a "soup only" restaurant. Not Eric's favorite. | This kids was really good on the accordian. Much better than the gypsies that play on the streets. | A huge fine for "peeing in the wild". Necessary, I guess, considering all the beer that was being consumed | Massive crowds | I wonder how the place looks when the Ghent Festival is not going on? | The next day, on our way to St. Peter's Abbey (Sint- Pietersabdij) - I wonder how long these bikes have been here? | At St. Peter's Abbey they had an interesting audio/video guide that lead you through the whole complex | We took a rest in the beautiful medieval garden | They hire this hall out for events and parties | At the Ghent Botanical Gardens | SMAK - sounds like an acronym for an eastern Europen spy organization in a James Bond film. But it's actually the modern art museum (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) | In the beautifully scenic ruins of St Bavo's Abbey, from the 7th century | We looked around for geocaches, and there was one right outside the abbey ruins, very well hidden. Peter found it. | Weird building - how do the windows work? | This is the bike parking lot at the main train station. We rented bikes there - it was quite the ordeal getting them, the rental place was not well run. | We biked along a canal. Found this zipline area near a park. | There was some beautiful canal-front biking, with interesting houses the whole way | A ferry across the canal. | Walking back to the apartment | At Konig Albertpark | On the way to take a day trip to Bruge, via train. Bruge, in contract to Ghent, had loads of tourists, many in large tour groups that clogged the roads. | At the Begijnhuisje in Bruge | A boat tour | The little order kiosks are very popular at European McDonalds. | At the gothic town square | Cute narrow house | They had some outdoor toys at the folk museum we went to | ...and a friendly cat | To make the city more interesting for the kids, I allowed them 2 extra minutes of screen time every time they found a year number on a building. This one is from 1672. | Beautiful canal-side balcony | These scallop shells in the street mark the Bruges section of the ancient pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. | Back in the Bruge train station | In Ghent again - around the Lieve canal area | Next to the Rabot sluice is a public housing high-rise, which is scheduled to be demolished | At Sint-Baafskouterpark | A great playground at Bijgaardepark | View from the bell tower in Ypres - destoyed in World War I (known as the Great War until World War II), but rebuilt | Walking around World War I battlefields - Klein Zwaanhof. The line of different color concrete marks where an old trench was located. It's now an industrial area - you can see a huge manure facility behind it. | The site of the Yorkshire Trench | One of the many WWI cemetaries around here. Millions of soldiers died in this war. | A trench near a large mine crater | Nearby - a huge section of vines with many tunnel spiders. Kind of creepy | |