sycamore stirrings: Gent

Yup, almost immediately after our carriage ride we headed over to the canals to take a boat tour. After our experience in Amsterdam, we were careful to book on a boat without a roof. We found that a roof hinders the view and, well, just doesn't feel as boat-like.

Our guide gave the tour in Flemish and French. Luckily we were given a sheet of pictures with explanations in English of the important sites.

Buildings along the canal. Very Dutch.

The canal was lined with flower boxes. It was beautiful!

Ghent's Castle - The Castle of the Count. Eva really wanted to go inside but it is now being used as a museum of weaponry - not a topic we'd choose for ourselves or our 5 year old.

The tops of many of the buildings had gold statues on the highest point of the roof facade. The one I tried to photograph is a ship.

My BIL snapping a pic.

A view of the canal from the street.

Let's see, so far we've traveled by car, tram, horse carriage and boat. I'm sure you can figure out what's next!

I'm so very backlogged with cool things to share with you I was tempted to make one pictorial summary of our trip to Belgium. But then I looked at the pictures. We simply enjoyed ourselves way too much to strip our stay in Belgium down to one quick post. So, I'm doing it properly. Well, sorta anyway.

A colleague of Bryce's recommended Ghent as a beautiful, friendly city and close (only 2.5 hours from Lux City) weekend get away. We found it to be all of those things. Within minutes of walking into the city an older gentleman, dressed in an elegant suit, offered to help me locate where we were on the map.

Here is a tiny bit of background info about Ghent: Ghent (Gent in Dutch) is located in the Flemish region of Belgium, up in the north just 30 minutes south of Bruge. The Flemish people of Belgium are also called The Flemings and speak Dutch. The Flemish Community is represented by a yellow shield with a black lion bearing red claws on it.

Our visit in Ghent ended up incorporating almost every means of transporatation. I'll take you through our visit via our modes of transit.

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After driving to Ghent by car we headed into the city center by tram. Once there we decided to take a horse carriage ride. Eva had been wanting to take a carriage ride since our trip to Rome. We thought it would be a relaxing yet fun way to see a bit of the city. At 25,00 euros for a 30-40 minute ride it seemed like just the thing to do.

Our driver's name was Annabel. Annabel gave us little bits of history and trivia along the way. She also pointed out important buildings. The commentary was perfect, not too much to be distracting but enough to give us a bit of education.