Hello everybody,
As some of you may know, we were in Belgium a couple of weeks ago and had quite a few pictures to sort through well, its done now so on with the sharing.
We spent most of our time in the city of Ghent and we visited Ostend, Brussels and Bruges. All were nice cities, but I really liked Ghent.
Ghent, Belgium
City Center
We arrived to Ghent late in the afternoon and walked around the city getting acquainted with our surroundings and of course, because we were hungry, we were also on a mission to find Belgium fries and beer.
Below is Rene taking in some sun as we walked towards town. The weather in Ghent was fantastic – when we left our village it was rainy and cold, so we were quite glad for a change in weather.
One of the city parks in Ghent, located near the university. Ghent is also the largest city in East Flanders and though one will hear French and German spoken in this Flemish part of Belgium, their main language is Dutch.
Ghent has a great history: Romans briefly wrote about it, Franks lived here, Vikings plundered, had a wool industry, the Dukes of Burgundy ruled it in the 1400s, Philip the Good was very bad, has ties to Juana the ‘loca’ of Castile, went through a religious war, was a Calvinist republic, but of course the Spaniards put an end to that…plus much, much more.
Ghent is also packed with young university folk on bicycles. Seeing so many people on bikes was great, I heard a rumor that Ghent will be passing a law that does not allow motor vehicles in the city. I think that would be a wonderful idea for downtown Portland.
Look it’s Mr. Marcy on drums.
Manteca???
Here’s what I meant about folks on bicycles and I thought Portland had a big bicycle population…now I know. 
Below is a picture of us walking underneath the St. Michielsburg Bridge towards the Graslie. 
I guess every afternoon people gather on the staired banks of the Graslie talking, drinking and smoking.
The Graslie 
Castle Gravensteen
I’ll talk about the castle in a later post, remember this is just an introduction post.
walking along the rivers that run through Ghent.
Looking for food, I won’t mention any names, but someone was getting hungry.
Belgium Fries, soooo good. 
With our bellies full of potato goodness and beer, we headed back through town towards our hotel for a good nights rest.
Ghent at dusk.
Goodnight Ghent
hugs,
M&L
more on the way, plus someone leaves for Hong Kong this weekend, not me, the other one.
1 comment:
We want more blog!
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