GENT

So I am back in Brussels from Gent today! I had such a great time. I met up with some friends that I made on this Incubus message board I have been frequenting for about 5 years now, and they showed me around, and I made them do really tourist-y things.

I made all my trains and stuff pretty good. It got easier. I think I have the whole metro/train system down. I also took some pictures from the train:

Some graffiti leaving the Midi Brussels station

The view from the train was really pretty on the way to Gent Sijt Pieters station in Gent.

Lots of cows

When I arrived in Gent, Nele and Femke met me at the train station. They took me through this park that was pretty close to the station. There was this cool cave thing that we walked under. It was pretty neat.

There were wild chickens in the park!

After we went to the park we walked around the town for a bit. They took me to a Belgian music store where I bought a Radiohead EP that I didn't have! So that was cool.

Then after that they took me to a comic book store because they knew I liked comics. We just kind of looked around for a bit. We left the comic shop and I took a few pictures of the city as we walked:

The smallest house in Gent

We ultimately arrived at Graslei (which is a street of some kind) where we took a boat tour on the river. There were all kinds of cool things to see. Lots of old buildings, and castles, and statues. It was very rich in history. Unfortunately I only remember a little bit of what the guide said. But I took lots of pictures:

This is Het Gravensteen. It is now a kind of museum. Later on in the day, Fem and I went inside.

Some graffiti I saw from the boat that I thought looked pretty cool.

And that is the dead-end in the river.

So after the boat tour we went into a few cathedrals. They had all kinds of religious art in there so it was pretty neat.

After the cathedrals, Nele had to leave. So Fem and I went to that Het Gravensteen place. It was really cool. It is basically a museum where they have all kinds of medievel weapons and torture devices and stuff.

You could also walk along the wall of Het Gravensteen. It had little doors along it and stuff so you could look at Gent from very hight up. It was a very pretty view.

I forgot to mention that we looked at all the exhibits backwards. So after we were on the wall for about an hour (we sat at the top for a while because there were a lot of big spiral staircases to climb) we went back inside the museum to see the things we missed.

That was pretty much the end of the exhibit. It was super interesting. I had a lot of fun. After this Fem and I got dinner. She took me to this place where they serve french fries. I had mine with mayonaise and like this deep fried chicken thing that I forgot the Flemish name of. It was so good. Seriously. I'm not even lying. They were extremely delicious.

We took the french fries back to their place and ate them there and I watched the dutch version of the office "Het Einland" (I think that's what it is called if I am remembering correctly). It was.......interesting.

But yes. I ended up spending the night at their place and took a train back to Brussels in the morning. I had a lot of fun and I will miss them.

Ignore my horrendous hat hair as I was wearing a hat all day.