http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/HowardB/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from HowardB en-us Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:14:42 +0000 Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:14:42 +0000 The forecast for Sunday was for clear skies but it wound up raining for much of the day from about 9 AM to 3 PM. We started off going to a flea market about a twenty minute walk from the hotel and tehn since it was raining went to a pretty interesting museum about Belgian history.By the time we got out of the museum and had lunch the rain was letting up and we spent the rest of the day hanig http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/Brussels-Capital-Region/Brussels/blog-410252.html Ok it's 3 AM on Sunday morning and I am having a hard time remembering what we did on Friday Since we had bought a 72 hour pass good for many attractions in Brussels we sort of felt obliged to use it to get a good value for the purchase. Because it was open earlier than other museums we started out at the musical instrument museum located on a great art nuveau building. we are not musial i http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/Brussels-Capital-Region/Brussels/blog-408276.html Picking up from the prior post we decided to spare the lamb after all. We ended up having one of the best dinners of our trip at the Marco Polo Restaurant in Ghent. The atmosphere was great the service very friendly and the food we both had a salad pasta with mushroom sauce and shared a tiramisu was very tasty.On Wedenesday it was another daytrip about an hour by train from Ghent to http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/Brussels-Capital-Region/Brussels/blog-407707.html Early Sunday morning June 7 Don and I picked up and packed up again and took the train from Antwerp to Ghent a trip of about 50 minutes. The city was very quiet when we arrived at 8 AM and it was a quick tram ride to the city center to our hotel the NH Ghent. We have stayed at NH hotels before and they were very nice this one is no exception.Off we went sightseeing around the city for the http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/East-Flanders/Gent/blog-406910.html Having mostly just wandered around Antwerp on Thursday we decided to go on daytrips from Antwerp on Friday and Saturday. Friday we went the 25 minutes by train to the small city of Mechelen pop. 77000 located halfway between Antwerp and Brussels. It was a nice city to visit large Cathedral several other impressive churches picteresque Grote Markt main square. Our day included a nice o http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/Antwerp-Province/Lier/blog-405972.html We left Brugge early in the morning on Wedensday June 3 taking the local Brugge bus from the Bariseele to the train station and then the quick 80 minute train ride to Antwerp. The weather had turned much cooler but we still wore shorts but this time with a sweatshirt. Antwerp is not as immediately apppealing as Brugge in the cuteness sense. It is about four times the size and its center http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/Antwerp-Province/Antwerp/blog-405371.html On Friday May 29 we arrived nice and early at the airport. Because our trip had been delayed by one week we had to scrap the nonstop flight from DC to Brussels and change to a onestop via Munich meaning we would arrive in Brussels 5 hours later than planned. That's not a big deal for a two week trip but a nonstop is nicer and as luck would have it the nice gate attendant switched us bac http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/West-Flanders/Brugge/blog-404407.html In two days we are off to Belgium from our home in Washington DC arriving on Saturday May 30. We will spend four nights in each of the following Brugge Antwerp Ghent and Brussels.We started planning the trip about 2 months ago. It's a destination we've wanted to go to for a while and it just beat out an Alaskan cruiseOregon trip for this vacation. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/blog-402784.html