Blogs from Gent, East Flanders, Belgium, Europe - page 7

we needed a break from the big cities. and gent was perfect. we were welcomed by lovely sisters jolien and cynthia. very friendly. perfect english. and of course they speak dutch and french as well. jolien showed us around her house, a lovely retro place. fleamarket finds in every nook. but tastefully put together. eclectic. i can see my place looking like this. she has an attic and a basement, a water closet. a BACKYARD. now that's a change from paris. her beautiful cats alain and dalida. a famous french duet sung by the two. alain currently purring my lap. he's a handful. our first full day jolien took us to the museum she once worked in. gave us a full-on tour. it was a great introduction to belgium, the peculiar traditions of its people. i ... read more

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 ... read more

We made our way from Torquay to Dover which was quite a drive. I think it took about 5 hours. Our ferry wasnt until 4am the next morning so we stopped at a reststop and had a few hours sleep. Boarded the ferry which only took 90 mins to cross the English channel. Arrived in Calais, France then started driving towards Belgium. We stopped at a rest stop on the way for a bit of a sleep cos we were quite tired. When we woke up I realised that I had left the headlights on so the battery was dead flat. We managed to get a jump start from a tow truck which turned out quite costly. Once we were back on the road we headed to Ghent for the night. Stayed a quite a nice ... read more

I spent 5 nights in Gent this trip thanks to the unwaivering hospitality of my friend Kat (shes probably reading this so I have to be nice!) and her housemate Annalies. The first night I surprised Kat by producing a haggis brought all the way from Dundee (and hopefully surviving the sweltering temperatures of my cycle to Gent in the lower reaches of ma rear pannier unscathed). In the end the haggis was partially consumed but we have to wait till Saturday for that story. Thursday and Friday were both fairly lazy recovery days. Kat was working in the Bio-Shop (pronounced Beo not Bio) so I got a lovely staff discount lunch there both days of soup and a roll with unknown but tasty organic filling. On thursday afternoon I also met up with Daithi, a ... read more

Gent, so who has heard of it? It's not really on the radar of most Kiwis that I know. I mean over the last couple of months while Lindo and I have been preparing for our trip not once has anyone come up to us and gone "hey, you guys have GOT to go to Gent", unlike Venice, Rome, Paris, London, Berlin, Prague etcetera... All we knew was that Ross, who is Lindos brother, lives there, and we were going to stay at his house for a few nights. Anyway, we left Cologne and headed towards Belgium on Tuesday the 1st of April, catching the ICE high speed train. After a short bit of confusion where we thought the carriage we were in was comfortable and suiting our needs, I realised that we weren't in our ... read more