Ghent

Or as I like to call it, "Meh," Belgium.

Many people highly recommended Ghent, as a place with historic sites like Bruges but with a more vibrant "living city" of students, etc.  Or so they said.  We had one day to find out.

I guess there were nice cathedrals in among the large, generic and boring pedestrian shopping streets.

There were some scenic canals with brownish water & touristy boat tours.

There were even cafes with decent views and fine beer.

We even found a coffee shop that served amazing coffee.

Hotel: nice on the outside, your great-grandmother's basement on the inside

But somehow Ghent let us down.  We didn't run into any boulevards or any reasonable amount of truly comfortable, usable public space.  The very touristy downtown was even busier than Bruges, but lacked the charm.  It was a maze of uniformity and sameness.  And on relatively short notice, we couldn't book a room that was reasonably priced and/or seemed at all interesting, so we ended up at a former monastery/now a cheap hotel.  Sounds interesting, right?  Wrong.  There's no monastery left - it's just a cheap rooming house whose rooms haven't been updated since the 1920s - most expensive stay of our trip to date, and by far the worst.

Let's see, is there ANYTHING interesting to do here?

Maybe Ghent would have been better with a local to show us around, or with something more interesting to see and do.  But it wasn't.  However, the next two days were in Antwerp, which very pleasantly surprised us with how great it is.

Den Dyver - beer pairing dinner

Our last night in Bruges, Sarah and I had a lovely beer pairing dinner at Den Dyver.

However, I'm going to make you all read about it in the beer-specific blog I'm starting up.  Follow this link: http://hoplogblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/den-dyver-beer-pairing-dinner.html

While beer is obviously figuring prominently on this leg of our trip, from time to time I will probably want to REALLY nerd out on a beer topic.  Rather than boring most of you to death, I will post a link here and you can simply pop over to my "hoplog blog" if you're interested.

Cheers!

Our Visit to the Jersey Shore

Okay, it might not be the Jersey Shore, but Belgium does have its very own beach resort town called Oostende.  It's about a fifteen minute train ride from Bruges, so Chad and I figured we would check it out and dip our toes in the North Sea while we were at it.

Of course the town has a lovely cathedral, seen here through this ship.

Is this ship served with almonds?  I dislike that very much.

The town is equipped with many, many hotels, shops, and restaurants.  I can only imagine how packed it gets in the summer when the weather is nice.  Reinhold Messner would probably eat here if he came to town:

I think this ship is used to set up wind farms out in the North Sea.  Unfortunately the signs were in Flemish so we couldn't decipher exactly what was going on.

This beach appears to be under construction...

As a result, there are many, many things you can't do on it.

Chad goes for a wade in the chilly North Sea!  (Come on, you didn't really think that I was going to put my feet in that icy water, did you?)

And then obliges to fulfill my request that he write our names in the sand.

All in all, a fun little trip from Bruges!

Tour de Belgium

A necessary activity on any European vacation is to rent bikes.  As my brother will happily tell you (and I think did tell many of you at me and Chad's wedding last summer), I am not exactly the most talented bike rider in the world.  We figured that Bruges with its easy to ride bikes, copious bike paths, and flat terrain would be the perfect place for such an adventure.  Little did we know what an adventure it would be - the weather changed rapidly and dramatically throughout the day.  The only thing consistent was the super strong wind.

Chad captured this shot of me riding across a bridge with these Belgians, who are clearly impressed by my mad cycling skills (or, rather, tolerated that they had to wait 50 metres to pass me).

Chad is my own personal Magellan - checking the map to make sure we're going in the right direction.

Bruges is filled with canals and we waited several times for bridges to lift and lower and for locks to fill.

Contemplating the road ahead, as it begins to sprinkle with rain.

But, lucky us, it just sprinkled a bit before the sun came out again.  You can see below that the buds are on the trees, but it's still essentially early spring in Belgium.  This bike path ran along the canal towards a town called Damme.  It is mostly paved, almost entirely free of traffic, and on the way out with the sun shining and the wind at our backs we were on top of the world.  We made it to Damme no problem and decided to journey on to another town called Oostkirke.

Sadly, the sun did not last that long before an intense rain shower came along and soaked us almost entirely.  At this point we learned that Belgian buildings don't really have overhangs, and were reminded that trees without leaves make terrible shelter.  A few minutes into the storm we found a tiny overhang on a deserted building where some Belgian bikers were also holed up.  They promised us that the rain would pass in half an hour or so (!) and pointed out some swallows that apparently bring good luck.  Here we are weathering the storm.  Don't be confused by the fact I still have my sunglasses on - this was merely to keep the rain out of my eyes!

As promised, though, the rain eventually passed.  Even with the sun out again, below you can see the dark clouds that had just passed.

In Oostkirke we ate lunch beside this church.  It is a lovely, tiny town that is supposed to be quite touristy in the summer, but on this brisk day of inclement weather we had the place to ourselves.

Lunch in the sun and wind gave us time to dry out, but on the way back to Damme we encountered another rain storm - this one even more intense than the last!  By the time we got to Damme and stopped for hot chocolate I was as wet as if I had gone swimming in the canal.  The rain was so hard and the wind so brisk at times it was actually painful as the drops pelted my head.  Luckily, the cafe where we stopped had a fire (and a hand dryer in the bathroom) that I could use to start drying out before the wind took care of the rest on the way home.

All of these Belgian school children are better cyclists than me.  They were also dry, so they are also obviously better at seeking shelter in rainstorms.

One of several windmills along our journey.

Looking back at the town of Damme.

Our reward for a journey well cycled!  All of these were recommended by Inga at the beer store we found the day before.  The Viven Imperial IPA on the right was by far my favourite - it is made by a Flemish brewing company but is amazing close to a Pacific Northwest Imperial IPA!

After a bit of a break we headed out for more beer - this time we ended up at a pub we had seen earlier that is supposed to be the oldest pub in Bruges.  It was super cozy and a nice place to relax after a busy day.

Beautiful Bruges skyline after a day of storms.

Chocolates and frites and bier, oh my!

We spent our first day in Bruges walking around the old city.

Not really my kind of place. I don't think "palace" goes with "awning."

Many fairy-tale canals snake through the old city.

Straffe Hendrik Quadrupel was an excellent beer - very dry, very complex, quite strong. Went well with the substandard carbonnade de flammade (a Flemish stew) I had at a touristy place our first night.

Many people live in the old city - it's a very upscale area.  However, since there are only a few entrances/exits from the old town, there's a rush hour with bad traffic (even though most of downtown is pedestrianized and not designed for driving).  I'm not sure what it's like to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a Massey Fergusson tractor, but this guy is living it.

Mmm, chocolates...  Apparently this just might be the best chocolate shop in the world (according to Kevin, who is Belgian and ought to know such things...).  I sampled a few of their chocolates, and wow, they were good.  I also sampled a few for Sarah, who couldn't have anything due to nut allergies.

Tour boat in back ground - rainy in foreground.

Tour boat departure area and one of the churches.

Finally, Belgian frites with mayonnaise!  We took refuge from the rain below the town bell tower, along with many others.  The fries were truly excellent.  But sharing a large felt like being run over by a steamroller - not something you recover from quickly.

"Chocolate Tulip" Hot Chocolate

This was a fantastic suggestion by our host Hilda.  Within 1/2 block of the main Markt is "Bittersweet," a tea room that serves light lunches etc.  Hilda said we needed to try their hot chocolate.  (The hostess was great & the prices were reasonable for downtown Bruges - highly recommended.)

The idea is that you have a chocolate tulip filled with dark (or milk, or white) chocolate flakes.  Sarah couldn't have to tulip due to allergies, but she could have the chocolate flakes.  You also have an insulated cup filled with very hot steamed milk.  You drop the tulip on top, which floats for several minutes while the "leaves" soften and melt.

Then, quite suddenly, the tulip slips under the surface and is gone.  Above is the moment of transition.

And now you're free to stir the milk and have the world's best hot chocolate.  Not kidding, it's amazing.

Mmm, you get a few residual flakes on top & at the bottom, yum.

We happened upon a fantastic beer store near the Jan Van Eyck statue - Bacchus Cornelius.  We searched for lesser-known Belgian beers, and had a wonderful 20+ minute beer conversation with their employee Inga.  We bought a few bottles to sample.  It was by far the coziest beer store I've ever seen.

This is the back room, with Sarah and Inga speaking up front. Real wood-burning fireplace, couch, embroidered pillows.

Even an old piano for extra charm.

Inga recommended we try one of the cellar bars nearby, for more beer.  This one was closed, but we went back a couple of days later.  It was full of students in their 20s, and featured an acoustic band playing very, very grunge-sounding music, which suited me perfectly since that's what I listened to and played when I was in undergrad.

The above building was apparently the former Archer's Guild, in case you didn't think this really was a medieval city.

No, it's not the Friendly Giant's castle - it's another gate through the fortifications to the old city.

Canal-appropriate boats docked along a canal.

It was nice of someone to knit this under-dressed girl some gloves and a flower.

On the way back to our room, we took a closer look at this flower garden and non-working fountain.  There are plaques in three languages.  Upon closer inspection...

Well, that's certainly nice for a Canadian to see.

And even closer to our room (2 blocks), I spotted this in someone's yard who was doing a little construction: Canadian wood!