Gent City Trip

Time for another step into the big, big world, as we went on another short outing to discover some places and musea in Belgium.

The past weekend Noshi and me decided it was time to get away from it all for 2 days, and though Booking.com found a little hotel near Gent.

Arriving in Gent Dampoort station (though, in hindsight, Sint Pieters might have been a better option to get the connection by bus to our hotel) on saturday, we set out to stroll a bit around town.  And boy was it busy, as there where actually 2 foodtruck festivals going on at the same time, and next to each other.

I myself was mostly amazed how two very busy tramlines rode through the center of town and right through the shopping streets.  Lots of "ding dings" where heard xD...

 Yes, they had a Games Workshop as well...

Of course, ice cream is mandatory on such walks.

The Hotel

The hotel we stayed in was about 1 kilometre outside the city center, on the town border with Melle.  Hotel Lepelbed is famous for the amount of cycling teams that stayed there, including CSC of Ivan Basso, and the place even has a signed mountain classification jersey from Laurent Jalabert hanging in the hallway amongst a lot of others.

And we had nice neighbours... including the black sheep of the family who was all to cute...

The bed was hu-mon-gous and had a great matras, and it was a nice and tidy room, though it had one drawback.

The shower plate didn't fit well to the tubedge, so when I took a shower, we could dry out half the bathroom afterwards... oh well, hot baths where taken afterwards instead...

But it was a good hotel and the breakfast in buffet form on sunday was fresh and nice, included in the price.

Dinner at Charles Quint

Located nearby the impressive town hall, we had booked through Social Deal a 3 course menu at Charles Quint, a brasserie / restaurant.

Seeing the prices in Ghent, which are to be honest on the high side, this was a great deal at 17.80 per person.  It was their basic menu in which you had free choice, so I went for shrimp croquettes (Noshi took cheese ones), the local specialty Gentse Waterzooi (a sort of stew / broth with chicken, vegetables and potatoes) and a Dame Blanche (Bavarois for Noshi).

Great food, nice big portions, and that for a low price, a highly recommended deal!

And then...

Back in the hotel, it was time for that day in the year...

I loved Austria the most of the songs, though the denmark Viking Hymne is still ringing in both our heads after two days.  I wasn't amazed they gotten the 5th highest marks from the spectators, considering the popularity of vikings the past years...

Sunday: Het Gravensteen

Het Gravensteen is a huge waterfortress build originally to keep Ghent in check in the 12th century.  It later was used as a court by the Counts of Flanders, and even a factory building, before being restored to it's former glory during the 20th century.

It hosts a nice collection of medieval weaponry, including the huge zweihanders that where about as tall as I am, and I'm 1m83...

On the walls, you have a beautifull view over the city of Ghent.

Another huge collection in the museum is that of ancient torturing devices, going from fingerclamps over heavy cuffs to racks... I guess what used to be for torturing, is now a wet dream playroom for you, 50 Shades fans out there...

And it was last besieged actually in 1949, as part of one of the most impressive student jokes in Belgian history...

Of course, I grabbed myself a Belgian Heritage coin from the Gravensteen for my collection

A word of caution though if you want to visit this mighty building: it is a lot of steep stairs to climb and descend, so if you aren`t that well on your feet, you might miss large parts of the tour!

More strolling through the city

As we where closing down the day with some walking around, we went for a beer near the local Vismijn building.  What an impressive frontage that has, which I couldn't say for the local "Bockor" pils.  It was a bit weak to my taste, no offense, tasting like Heineken or Amstel instead of our stronger pilsbeers...

I also wanted to take a look at the Great Cannon that is placed near the Minnewater, a very huge and impressive siege cannon.

While walking back to the tram to get to Sint Pieters station, we stumbled on this little house called Steen. A small, free exhibition on woven textile art was happening there, not really our thing, but the house itself was an accidental ancient find with a 13th century waterpit in it.

Finally, the last thing we visited, again by stumbling on it by accident, was a second hand book fair, taking place in the monumental hall of the church.  Now me and books... and I found this lovely work on the chinese T'ang dynasty for a single euro in there.

And so we went back on the train, and rounded out our weekend with that special Belgian thing, a good 'frituur' right around the corner...

That's it for this city trip.  We might have been better off leaving already on friday evening instead of saturday noon, but in the end we got to see what intrests us the most (het Gravensteen), had a nice weekend, and some lovely discoveries.  Gent is a city we will be visiting again in the future for sure...

But first, let's get "freeze the arrow in the sky, leave your mark and keep it high, ooohooohoooooooh" out of my head....