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I'm writing this a day late but you'll get the idea. Saturday, Sonia, Mom and I went to Ghent. It's funny because it wasn't really on my list of "must-do's". But I am SO glad we went. It was a beautiful town. We got into the center after a little bit of trying to understand the tram system.
When we got to the canal area, I fell in love. It was such a pretty stretch with the quaint buildings typical of small, older European towns. We went down this small side street and found a tiny little cafe next to a flower shop. The day was beautiful (70's and sunny) so we sat outside. Mom and I shared this AMAZING "cold plate" with jicama, beets, carrots, raspberries, plums, blackberries, and 3 kinds of amazing (and unknown) cheeses . I know, sounds silly to be jazzed up about what was basically a salad but trust me, it was good.
Then it was off on a canal trip. While we were waiting, we saw a couple who had just gotten married. Their wedding party all got onto one of the boats and road around the canal a few times. Everytime people waved at them they yelled and waived and just had a grand old time. I can't remember if I uploaded the picture or not but if not, you have to imagine a canal boat filled with 30 or so people all dressed to the nine's. It was really cute.
The tour was fun because it was guided but the lady spoke in 3 languages so I have to admit I missed most of what she said in English because I wasn't paying attention when she spoke in Dutch. But the buildings were so pretty and there was really some interesting facts about how they were the most prosperous city outside of Paris many years ago because of the corn and glass trades and then later textiles.
After the tour, we wandered around for a while looking for a particular church that had some really famous paintings called the "Mystic of the Lambs" (or something close to that). When we finally found the church, there was some huge fashion show/dj/soap star thing out front of the church. We went up to the steps of the church (behind the stage) and as we did, all of these screaming teenage girls started going crazy. So being the dorks we are, we turned around and took pics of famous Belgian soap stars that we don't even know who they were. We're hoping to do some research on that later. Well we made it into this beautiful church just in time to miss the closing of the panels so we didn't get to see those. But we walked the rest of the church and saw many beautiful wood and marble carvings. I'd put up pics but we couldn't take any there .
The rest of the afternoon / evening was spent wandering the streets and having a couple of beers and some food. I'm loving the Belgian beer and I'm getting a different one each time. The funny part is, I take the first sip, and say to mom "you're not going to like that" and she tries it anyway and makes a face. Next time I'll have to get a picture of it. .
Just as we were about to head out, some older guy started talking to us (Sonia and I tried to convice mom that he was hitting on her) and he told us that we need to see the canal all lit up. We went down and even though it was getting dark, there were no special lights. It gets dark here around 10 PM so by the time we got home it was midnight. Very FUN but long day. I'll write about today's "adventure" in Brussels later. So that's it for now. Au Revoir.
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