It's been a few weeks, but here's the next chapter in my Summer 2024 Euro Trip series.
Chapter IV has us leaving Honfleur and driving to Ghent, Belgium, to meet up with our Belgian Rotary exchange student.
We knew that we'd be driving from France to northeastern Germany to drop off Charlotte with our German exchange student, so it made perfect sense to meet up with Jérôme along the way in his home country of Belgium. We had a little adventure on the drive, as hubby was trying to avoid paying a hefty toll to cross a bridge and picked an alternate route that plunked us down right on the river bank. After a moment of confusion, we realized a free car ferry was waiting to ferry us across an industrial area. Unexpected, and we had a laugh about it.
This was my 3rd visit to Belgium and I wanted to see a new city for me, so we had picked Ghent, a very scenic university town where some of Scott's Swedish family lived for a while!
Like Bruges, Ghent is located in the Flemish part of Belgium, and they speak Flemish, which is Dutch, and to me it sounds a lot like German. I find the language really curious and interesting with all of those vowels. You might know that I speak French, and I've studied German, but in the Flanders part of Belgium, we've learned that you seem to be more welcome speaking English than French.
Give me a city with canals, medieval architecture, cobblestones, and a castle any day of the week! Add exploring it while catching up with an amazing young man who lived with us for a year as an exchange student pre-pandemic, and it's even better.
I rented us a really sweet apartment just 2 blocks from the center by foot. It was interesting to see that there were more people traveling by bicycle or on foot than there were cars. I love the bicycle culture there. I love being able to walk everywhere!
Once we had settled into the apartment, we headed out to explore the city. I hadn't done much research on it, but I had few items on my itinerary. We walked past Gravensteen Castle with plans to book timed tickets for the next morning. We watched boats and paddle boarders floating through the canals. We found a café with outdoor seating on the canal, I believe it was Petit Grand Café 't Kanon, where we had our apéritif, and caught up with what was new in Jérôme's life since we'd last seen him 2 years ago. Then we walked some more, exploring the scenic squares, until we found ourselves in a restaurant for dinner. We headed back to the apartment around 10pm as the sun was setting (it sets late there in the Summer!)
Day 2 in Ghent started with delicious local pastries Scott found in a bakery near our apartment, and coffee made in our kitchen. A little light rain didn't stop us from visiting Gravensteen Castle, known as the Castle of the Counts, complete with moat! (There had just been a wedding in the tiny chapel of the castle while we were there - how cool for that couple!) The audio guides were included and were well-narrated and funny. It was well worth visiting, and the prices were affordable - Charlotte's ticket as a student was about $3. The next age group was around $9, and ours were maybe $15 at most.
We couldn't go to Ghent and not try the famous Belgian fries at Frites Atelier, so we found them and shared a couple of orders with a few dipping sauces. We tried their classic house-made mayonnaise, and I think the Sauce Andalouse, which is something Jérôme had introduced us to while he lived with us! The fries were amazing. I would not call myself a connoisseur per se, but they now rank as my favorite fries.
While enjoying our Belgian fries, Charlotte came up with the idea of booking an escape room for the rainy afternoon. Doing escape rooms in different countries is one of our hobbies, and we did a bunch of them with Jérôme during his year with us. The website was in Dutch, and she did great navigating it, only she missed the fact that the escape room itself was about 40 minutes away in Oostende. We jumped in the car and drove to Puzzle Escape Rooms, and it was a challenging room! The people working there were really interested that 3 of us were Americans, as they said they really don't see Americans there. The town itself looked nice too, but not as charming as Bruges or Ghent.
Jérôme had to get back to his town for an event later that evening, so he dropped us at the apartment, and we raced back to the center to catch the very last canal boat tour of the day. I love getting out on any water and seeing the city from a different point of view. The clouds were clearing, and we learned about the history of the city, saw great architectural features we would have missed on our own, and disembarked in a different neighborhood so we could walk and explore the area that seems to have a high concentration of churches. Then we went to explore the Patershol neighborhood, criss-crossing the canals, and finding adorable alleyways. Earlier in the day we had searched for Ghent's version of the Manneken Pis in Brussels (you know the statue of the boy peeing?) We finally found it by looking up at a building, where the statue is 3 children, Lena, Nestor & Luna. We really do a lot of walking while we're in Europe! By this point in the trip, despite all of the wine, cider, pastries, cheese, etc., I was down 7lbs.
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We eventually settled on a place for dinner and had a great meal before heading back to our apartment, ready to crawl into those cozy beds!
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