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Published: August 2nd 2008
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After a busy first day of the holiday, we were up at 7am fully rested and ready to do our first bit of Interrailing! Our hotel was only about a five minute walk to Lille Flandres Station, and in our ever-lasting panic of things going wrong, we were there about half an hour early to make sure our train was on the board and we knew exactly where we needed to go. Admittedly, we had gotten there early in the hope of finding breakfast too...but soon realised that would be a rather fruitless search given it was so early on a Sunday morning (even at this point, we were in that holiday mood where the days just merge into one another and we stop paying real attention to days and dates). We found the train fairly easily, though naturally John felt the need to check with the conductor that it was
definitely the right train and we
definitely weren't going to accidentally end up in Andorra. On finally erasing all suspicion about the train, we hopped on, and found that it was a very nice, easy journey...hoorah! It was just a local train and practically empty-and on finding that generally, French
trains are just very similar to English trains and not some crazy machines designed to confuse and bedazzle us on every corner, we felt a whole lot better about the journeys ahead!
We arrived in Ghent at 9am and immediately made a beeline for the luggage lockers where we were able to dump our backpacks for a couple of hours (those things are an absolute Godsend, it has to be said!) before setting off into the city. We had originally planned on getting the tram, but on realising we'd probably use up all our time in the city just finding the tram stop, it was probably easier to just walk it. The walk took 25 minutes, passing through some very Belgian streets (don't ask me what made them so Belgian...I just know that's the impression we got of them!) and some more uninteresting areas, but it was simple enough (if exceedingly warm). On arriving at a Tommy Hilfiger store on a pretty pedestrian street, we knew we'd arrived in the city centre-and the tram only beat us by about two minutes, so I feel we made the best choice by getting to see a little more of the city
on the walk up :o) The centre of Ghent is very compact, so we almost immediately found ourselves at Korenmarkt, the central square of the city. Immediately, we were in love. It was incredibly pretty, with the Stadhuis, St Bavo's Cathedral, the Belfry and St Nicholas's Church all within our view, and the cathedral bells ringing for Sunday mass. We absolutely adored it :o) We took a little time just wandering around, going over St Michael's Bridge to get a view of the canal/canalside, and taking in the history of the place...it felt so old and quite atmospheric (though in a very good way) and we just loved it more the longer we were there :o)
We then walked up to Gravensteen-the Castle of the Counts-which I had really been looking forward to visiting. It was originally built in around the twelfth century and though a lot of it has been restored and rebuilt over the centuries, it's still a very old and forbidding looking place. Though, saying that, everything I'd heard about it beforehand was that it was really depressing and grim-looking, but I actually thought it was really pretty! It just had a certain sense of power
about it-though given my love of history, I was probably just really fascinated by how old it was and what it had seen through the years. Anyway, we decided to buy tickets to tour the castle, which was really interesting-although filled with spiral staircases, which wasn't brilliant for me considering I've been scared of spiral steps since I was little! There were a few displays set up around the building, showcasing things like weapons, suits of armour and general artefacts from hundreds of years ago. Most people we saw were just shooting through the displays really quickly, but we found them totally fascinating (again, I just love old stuff lol!). Most interesting were a couple of rooms displaying torture materials like racks, iron collars and even a real guillotine (with a real blade!)-it was seriously interesting. However, the best thing of all about the castle was that we got to go on the roof, from where there were beautful views of the city and especially of the famous three spires-brilliant. On the way back down, we also got to see some of the remaining walls of the original castle and also areas like the chapel and prison. To the best
of my memory, it only cost about 6-7 Euros to get in and it was well worth it-Gravensteen rocks!
Once we'd left the castle, we headed straight for the canal and jumped on one of the boat tours that was just leaving. We
loved the boat (I know, it's kind of obvious that we just adored the city in general!) because it was just small and in the open air, which was a hell of a lot nicer than the usual glass-roof monstrosities you get in bigger cities. Plus, it was a really hot day, so it was nice and relaxing just sitting there with a bit of a breeze taking in the sights :o) The driver was really nice and interpreted the tour into English for us on the way round (we were the only Brits on the boat)-although one guy was apparently very unhappy about this and according to John (I wasn't really paying attention) was tutting and blithering about the fact that we didn't speak Dutch! Meh. Aside from that, the tour was really nice and relaxing-the first half was by far the more interesting though, so I'm glad we only took the 40 minute, rather
than the one hour, tour...I imagine the other twenty minutes wouldn't have been all that exciting! I haven't mentioned yet that Graslei and Korenlei, the two canalside streets, were also incredibly beautiful-it'd be easy to just end up sitting there for about three hours taking in all the ancient, gorgeous buildings. Unfortunately though, we were running out of time in Ghent...so after grabbing a chicken wrap, it was time to head back to the station for the 1pm train to Brussels.
Incase it wasn't massively obvious, we totally fell in love with Ghent and were really sad that we had to leave so soon. Like I said, the city centre is very small so we got to see a fair bit of what it has to offer but we could easily have stuck around longer just walking the streets, sitting outside with a drink and generally enjoying the city. I'm
so glad we made the effort to see it :o)
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Martj
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You're the most talented writer that i know!
honey! i do adore your travel blog! and i really cannot wait for you to post new entries of this amazing itinerary! i am writing to you, but it has been taking a little more than planned. hope you understand me... love you!