Ghent and Brugge We had intended to try to get over to Belgium for a couple of days over Christmas/New Year, but the miserable weather discouraged us. However, as the miserable weather went on and on and on, we thought we’d just go anyway. As usual, and despite the weather, it was excellent.
Calais Thursday - Got a flier out of work to catch a train home to jump in the car and drive to Folkestone to catch a late Eurotunnel to Calais, where we arrived just early enough to have a beer before turning in for the night at the pleasant and comfortable Ibis hotel at the Citie de Europe.Friday - This was the view of the Ibis car park from our room. At least it’s not raining, like it has been almost every day for the last several weeks.
Ieper Market Square Not only was it not raining, it was beautifully sunny, albeit a little chilly. Having left Calais, we headed for Ieper (or Ypres depending on which map you happen to be looking at). As we arrived just before lunchtime on Friday, parking in the centre of town proved to be pretty straightforward. This is a view across the Market Square.
Menin Gate Just up the road from the Market Square is the Menin Gate, a famous monument to The Great War.
Menin Gate The names of over 54,000 soldiers who died during The Great War and whose bodies were never found are carved into the Menin Gate. Here are just a few of them.
The Ramparts The Menin Gate is set into The Ramparts, which are a very nice place to go for a walk when the sun is out.
Ramparts View A view of The Ramparts from near Rijselpoort.
Ice House This is the entrance to the Ice House, which is built into The Ramparts. Before the discovery of refrigeration, ice was collected from the Kasteelgracht in the winter and stored in the Ice House, where it apparently lasted well into the summer.
Rijselpoort Judith at the Rijselpoort.
Ramparts Cemetery This is a view of the Ramparts Cemetery, which contains 198 Commonwealth graves.
Market Square The In Flanders Fields Museum is in here. It’s very highly rated on Trip Advisor, but we didn’t have the time to pop in on this day as we had to get to Ghent and check in to our hotel there. Not to worry though. Based on what we’ve seen of Ieper during our brief visit, we’ll definitely be back before long.
Saint Martin's Cathedral We’d parked the car next to Saint Martin’s Cathedral, so there was chance for a quick photo before we left Ieper for Ghent.
Marriott An hour later and we’d arrived at the Marriott in Ghent. This is a view of their amazing atrium.
St Nicholas' Church Having checked in, we went our for a walk. This is one of the most photographed views in Ghent, with the old Post Office on the left, St. Nicholas’ Church to the right of centre, with the Belfry behind it and the tower of St. Bavo’s Cathedral just visible on the far right, covered in scaffolding.
City Pavilion With the Belfry on the right. As far as I can work out, the City Pavilion is the decorative top of an underground car park, with the four concrete pillars that support the pavilion’s roof concealing lifts that provide access to the car park.I’m slightly surprised that we don’t make more effort to conceal our car parks underground like this in the UK.
Oude Vismijn Having spent a while walking about, we popped into Oude Vismijn for a beer. There’s a nice view of the canal from here.This photo was taken with my phone.
Former Moeskrahat We hung around in Oude Vismijn until it got dark and we got hungry. When we were here a few years ago on New Year’s Eve, we had a brilliant curry in a restaurant called Moeskrahat. So we went looking to see if it was still there. It wasn’t. It’s now called Amadeus and sells ribs and the like. Doh!
Amadeus Just up the road from the former Moeskrahat-now-Amadeus is another branch of Amadeus. It was still fairly early (about 6:30pm) and most of the restaurants we’d seen were almost completely deserted. But Amadeus was rammed, so we popped in to see what all the fuss was about.It turned out that the fuss was about all-you-can-eat ribs and baked potatoes for EUR15. And most excellent they were too. If you like this sort of simple food, I can highly recommend a visit to Amadeus.
Amadeus
Marriott at Korenlei After dinner we went for a walk. Back by the canal, this is a photo of the back of our hotel. It’s quite a contrast to the glass atrium inside
Oude Vismijn A view of the Oude Vismijn, where we were drinking earlier, from across the canal.
Gravensteen I’m not very happy with this photo because the exposure is not very good, but it’s the only photo I’ve got of Gravensteen at night. So I’ve included it anyway.
Graslei This is the view across the canal from outside the Marriott. It turns out that the Marriott hotel is situated at the absolute epicenter of scenic Ghent.
Graslei Looking down the canal from outside the Marriott, with St. Michael’s Bridge in the distance.
Het Groot Vleeshuis More nice reflections.
City Pavilion This is the roof of the City Pavilion. I could probably have done with my ultra-wide lens at this point.
Marriott Atrium Back at the Marriott, this was the view from the fourth floor (where our room was) looking down on the lounge/bar.
Marriott Atrium The atrium looks fabulous during the day, but it looks amazing when it’s lit up at night.
Gravensteen Saturday - The last time we were here, Gravensteen was shut because it was New Year, so we’ve taken the opportunity to have a look round today. They’ve got a pretty well organised self-guided tour and they provide you with an iPod Touch to watch informative videos as you go along. I wonder how many of those they “lose” each year?
Armour On the tour.
Gravensteen View Part of the tour goes to the roof of the tallest tower. This must be one of the best views in Ghent. You can just see the top of the atrium at the Marriott Hotel right in the middle of the photo.
Gravensteen View From the tower.
Ghent Rooftops From the Gravensteen tower. I just took this one because I thought it looked interesting.
Gravensteen Roof The roof of one of the rooms in the Gravensteen. Good arches.
Gravensteen Outer Wall With Judith providing some scale.
Korenlei and Graslei Back on St. Michael’s Bridge in the daytime using my ultra-wide lens.
Gruut Brewery We always like to pop into the local brewery(s), if available. In Ghent, that’s the Gruut Brewery. They make their beers with spices (gruit) instead of hops. This allegedly makes their beers healthier. They had five beers available at the time of our visit - a white, a blonde, an amber, a brown and “Inferno”, ranging from sturdy 5% to a highly feisty 9%. We bought a taster set, which allowed us to sample them all. All were excellent, but the brown was my favourite.They also sell some nice food to accompany your beer. Perfect.
Building Site A while later we walked past this building site. Evidently two sides this building were sufficiently impressive that they were worth going to some lengths to preserve when the entire rest of the building had been demolished.
Korenlei and Graslei The same view as earlier from St. Michael’s Bridge, at night through my ultra-wide lens.
Graslei From under St. Michael’s Bridge (because it was raining quite heavily at this point).
Shop Window The Fallen Angels is a memorabilia shop just up the road from our hotel. They’ve got some fascinating stuff in there.
Beer Back in the Mattiott, we had just enough stamina left for a beer before turning in for the day.
Marriott Atrium This was the view from our table in the bar when I stood my camera on the table and pointed it straight up.
Post Office Sunday - There was just time for a bit of a walk around town before we checked out of the hotel and headed for Brugge. Here’s the familiar view of the Post Office and St. Nicholas’ Church taken with my phone.
Burg Square A couple of hours later and we were at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Brugge (or Bruges depending on which map you’re looking at). This is the lovely view of Burg Square from our room.
Choco Story For some reason, Judith wanted to go to Choco Story, the chocolate museum. I think she was thinking “chocolate factory”, which would indeed have been interesting. But the chocolate museum was very, very boring.
Statue This statue was the most interesting thing in Choco Story, apart from the sample chocolate buttons that they have at the ticket counter. We only stayed for about 20 minutes.
Toy Shop Window Out and about and we passed this interesting looking toy shop. I can’t remember where it was.
De Bier Bistro It had also started raining (as Judith’s hair is demonstrating in this photo), so we retreated to one of our favourite Brugge bars - De Bier Bistro on Oude Burg - where we had a couple of lovely beers and some lunch.Judith’s spaghetti bolognese was as huge as it looks in the photo.
De Bier Bistro De Bier Bistro is underground in this impressive vaulted basement. As you can see, it’s not that rammed in the middle of Sunday afternoon.
2be Beer Wall We left De Bierbistro, but it was still raining, so we ducked into 2be to have a look at their impressive beer wall, which allegedly showcases every brand of beer on sale in Belgium.
2be This is the bar at 2be. It’s quite small, but they have a large and lovely terrace, which unfortunately isn’t that handy in January when it’s raining. They only have six beers on tap at any one time, but there are plenty of bottled beers to choose from too.
Brugge View The classic view of Brugge at night. I’ve taken this photo loads of times before, but it looks so fabulous, it was impossible to walk past without snapping it again. Unfortunately it was a bit windy for good reflections.
Belfry It started pouring with rain, so we were forced to retreat to our hotel for a while. However, when it stopped, I popped down the road to the Grote Markt to get a couple of shots with my ultra-wide lens.
Burg Square Burg Square, outside the Crowne Plaza.
Grote Markt A last shot of the Grote Markt before turning in for the night.Monday - The weather was pretty miserable on Monday, so we headed straight for Calais after checking out of the hotel just before lunchtime. Still, at least we’d had one fabulous day of sunshine at the start.And so ended another brilliant visit to Belgium.