Day 13 Rest day in Ghent

Location: Ghent
Route: Rest day
Accomodations: Camping Blarmeersen

We had a fairly restful sleep at the campsite last night, and despite the fact that it got a bit chilly overnight we managed to stay warm in the tent. Our 4 star camping site had nice showers, so we cleaned up from the road and made our way into Ghent for the day.

Breakfast was a Starbucks affair so we could have a taste of home (mostly) and also score some free Wi-Fi and charging outlets. We booked a few more nights accommodations in our upcoming cities- stay tuned to the blog to find out where we end up!!!

As you might expect from Saroja's post yesterday, she was very excited to see the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, so that was our first stop. The church that it is housed in is something like 700 years old, so it's pretty impressive all by itself. Saroja was very very very happy to see the Mystic Lamb and listened to the entire audioguide explaining all about each section. Mission accomplished.

There are also lots of advertisements here for the movie "Monuments Men", including large painted murals on the sides of buildings. The Mystic Lamb was stolen several times and moved many more times during the wars, so there's likely a connection there.

On our way to lunch we walked past the belfry and decided to stop in. That was also very cool! Only about 100 years or so younger than the other church and filled with the bells and carrolins and everything else your typical medieval belfry needs to mark time, warn of invasions, or cover up the sound of thunder. It had very winding spiral staircases that we used to get both up and down, which made it interesting when we ran into people coming the other way. Fortunately no one was injured.

The belfry also has a very cool dragon that was used as a weather vane back in the day. The old one has been replaced by a new dragon model, but the original is just inside the belfry which makes it much easier to see up close. Apparently, the original dragon even breathed fire during town celebrations way back when. We were impressed to learn that there were pyrotechnics in the medieval world!

Saroja is very taken with the medieval dragon

Lunch was a nice light veggie affair at a well rated soup place. Yah for veggies! Soup is apparently the "fast food"  of choice in Ghent, and we were not disappointed with it's tastiness. After lunch we went to the castle, which was VERY COOL! If I had any doubts about wanting to live in a castle before, I don't now. Although I could do without the display of medieval torture implements. That's one of the displays in the castle. I'll keep the armour, swords, daggers and guns though.

Penguin's future home

We took a boat tour along the canals after that. The boat tour was much better than the one in Bruges. Overall I think we both prefer Ghent over Bruges. Bruges has all of the old town and tourist stuff in one central place (The Bruges Egg,, as it's known to locals) which is convenient but makes it a bit over-touristy. In Ghent, the old buildings are more integrated into the city, which makes everything seem a bit more real and accessible. There's a spot from one of the bridges where you can see three of the church towers all lined up in a row. You can see the same skyline as it used to look in the 1500s,  which is really quite impressive! They call it Medieval Manhattan. Ghent used to bigger than LA and was considered the New York of medieval times.

Medieval skyline. Unfortunately the third building is being renovated (that's the one that has the lamb inside!) . 

Our understanding of Dutch is getting better, but very slowly. I still sound like the Swedish Chef trying to pronounce the street names and items off the menu. Still, we now know words like "exception"; for example, when it's a one way street but bikes are still allowed to ride down the opposite direction of traffic. Slightly terrifying.

Dinner, however, remains somewhat inaccessible. At least for veggies. There are a lot of well rated veggie restaurants in Ghent, as it is the veggie capital of Europe, but come dinner time those restaurants seem to close up and you're left with seafood and steakhouses. We did find a nice place in the end that had some good veggie dishes for Saroja and a tasty ice cream desert for myself, so at least in the end we prevailed.

Ghent makes a big mention of their lighting plan for the old section of town, so we stayed around until dark. The city does light up very nicely at night. There are lights built in underneath the sidewalks to light up the buildings and lights on all of the bridges. It was very pretty.

Ghent all lit up at dusk

Now we're back at the campsite, where the only obstacle to bedtime is finishing this blog. Saroja is very militant about the blog. Tomorrow we strike camp and head to Antwerp for another night of camping, although not a 4 star site this time...