Saturday morning we hit the road, and spent most of the day driving to Gent, our first stop. One thing I was curious to see was how the hotel was going to be laid out. The pictures on the website showed a tiny front of the hotel that looked just like the other historical buildings surrounding it. But then on the inside, it looked huge...much larger than from the outside. We eventually found out from a tour guide later on that when the Marriott bought the buildings they used, they were required to keep the external facade, but could do what they wanted behind that. So they only have their name on one of the buildings, but in fact they own four of them. And behind the front of the buildings, it gets even larger, but you can't tell from the canal.
One other interesting side note about our hotel is in the pictures you'll notice two gold circles on the building, each with a swan in it. In medieval times, when most people could not read and write, images were used to tell people what a building's function was. If there was one swan on it, it was a place to eat. But if there were two swans...it was a brothel. So our hotel used to be a medieval brothel.
Once we got checked in, we walked out through the back entrance and were on the canal that runs through the Korenlei section of Gent. This canal used to be one of the main passage ways for ships going from the English Channel to France, which made Gent an important medieval trading city. During it's height, it was three times the size of London. Now this area is popular both with tourists and the thousands of students who live in the city. On warm days, you'll see people out sipping a beer, reading, or just relaxing.
Today was just a relaxing day, with no plans, so we spent the afternoon wandering around the old town part of the city. We walked through the various churches there, stopped at cafes along the way, and took in the sights. When it was time for dinner, we stumbled upon the castle in Gent. In front of it were several restaurants, including a few selling Moules Frites, a Belgian speciality. Translated, it's Mussels and Fries. I got the garlic mussels and I have to say...they were some of the best mussels I've ever had. I washed them all down with Piraat beer, one I hadn't had since I was last in the US. Shanna never has to "convince" me to come to Belgium or The Netherlands...it could be for a shopping trip, and I'd jump at the chance for the food & beer alone.
After dinner, the sun was setting and we slowly strolled back to the hotel for the evening.
The next morning we got up and found a great little cafe to eat breakfast at. The food was good, but what made the meal was the amazing hot chocolate. Gent is farther north than Stuttgart, so while it wasn't freezing, it was pretty cool. When the hot chocolate came out, it was steaming milk with a cup full of chocolate chips. You dumped the chips in the milk, stirred it, and in a few seconds you had delicious hot chocolate.
We had a 2:30pm city tour scheduled, so with several hours to kill, we headed back to the castle, this time to explore it. There were supposed to be audio guides, but we never found the place to pick them up. So I don't have my usual historical background to give here, just that it was neat to walk around it. One thing I noticed that was odd was the castle's location. Usually castles sit outside of a city, and are used to defend it. The Gent castle was situated right in the center of town. Later on another tour we found out the reason...city defense was not it's purpose. It was built in 1180 by Phillip of Alsace, and modeled after the castles he encountered during the Crusades. He built the castle as a show of strength to the local residents. Apparently, the citizens of Gent were prone to riots and rebellions, and he used this castle to squash any resistance. The castle was built with metal pipes that ran from the torture chamber to the outside of the castle, so that when people were tortured, the whole city could hear it.
One of the biggest draws to the castle, aside from it's history of course, is the beautiful view of Gent from the top.
We had gotten lucky with the weather. It was supposed to rain all day, but as you can see from the pictures, it was beautiful outside. It did end up raining, but not until that evening when we were heading back to the hotel. When we finished walking around the castle, we walked out front and noticed a plaque etched in the ground that we hadn't noticed before. Apparently all the street lights in this particular square outside the castle were connected to the local hospital. When a baby is born, the lights in the square flicker to let people know. I thought that was pretty neat.
From there we walked over to a stand offering boat tours of the canal. Canal tours are always interesting because it combines the history of the city with a relaxing boat trip through out the various canals. The tour guide we had knew his stuff, and was a big fan of his city. He pointed out several things on the tour that he used as examples as to why Gent is better than Brugge or Brussels. He mentioned the Manneken Pis in Brussels, which is a huge tourist draw because it's a fountain head that is a little boy peeing, with water coming out of his penis to fill the fountain. He then pointed out the same statue over a building that we passed. That statue, he said, was built 350 years prior to the Manneken Pis, and unlike the Manneken, actually had a purpose.
Leather makers in medieval times needed to find something to help process cow skin into leather. Somehow it was discovered that urine would do this, but not just any urine. It had to come from children. They didn't know why, but it was shown in later years that the human urine eventually breaks down and becomes Ammonia, which is needed to make leather. The problem is that chemical disappears once a person starts drinking alcohol. So children, who didn't drink, had high concentrations of this chemical, and their urine was valuable. So when a child saw this statue above a shop, he/she knew they could make some money by selling their urine to the leather maker.
The rest of the tour was interesting, but I'll admit...I was paying more attention to the beautiful scenery and relaxing on the boat than everything he was saying. When we got back to our starting point, we had about 2 hours left, so we headed to a local pub to get some lunch. The pub that caught our eye advertised that they had over 250 different kinds of Belgian beers to try. They certainly did, including several Noel style beers. There's just something different and amazing about Belgian Christmas beers. It may not have been Christmas time, but that wasn't going to stop us from enjoying them! The pub was situated right on a local square, so we just sat and people watched, waiting for the time to walk over to the city tour start point. These are some of my favorite parts of our travels. Seeing all the sights are great, but it's always nice to sit, have a drink, and watch the locals carry on their daily business.
The city tour was OK. Our guide was nice, but we had a mix of English and French speakers, and she seemed to spend more time talking with the French people. We did meet a nice couple visiting from Baltimore, though. The husband sold software to various colleges around the US, so he had racked up a ton of miles and points. They cashed some of it in, and took a trip to Belgium and The Netherlands. We enjoyed talking with them through out the tour, and giving them suggestions on things to see in Brussels, where they were heading next.
When the tour was over, it was about 4pm. Shanna was getting tired, so we picked up some beer from a local supermarket, and headed back to the hotel. Shanna took a nap while I watched NFL pre-game shows. We have the NFL Gamepass, which allows us to watch all the NFL games, but it also gives us access to pre-game shows. So I streamed it to my iPad and watched while Shanna took a nap.
That evening we headed to a restaurant we'd seen that looked interesting. It was a ribs place. We'd seen several restaurants advertising ribs through the city, so we were intrigued. Shanna ordered the BBQ ribs, and I got the spicy ribs. This is one case where things were "lost in translation". Shanna's ribs were GREAT, but mine were just OK. They weren't spicy...they had spices on them. Mine weren't bad, but they were dry.
The next morning we got up early because we had a long day. We checked out of the hotel, and hit the road. We were going to stop in Vleteren, Belgium, then make our way up to Zaanse Schans, Netherlands. Ever since I first heard of the Westvleteren brewery, I've wanted to visit it. They don't distribute their beer, so the only way to get it is from the brewery itself. You can call and make a reservation for a limited quantity, or you can come to their store and hope they have some in stock. Since they are extremely popular, and only open their reservation phone for a few hours a week, it was impossible for me to get through to reserve. So we decided to risk it and hope the shop had some. Worst case, they wouldn't and we could try the beer at their cafe.
The drive out there was interesting...to say it was in the middle of nowhere would be putting it mildly. We were on the interstate most of the way, but 20km from our destination, we had to exit. From there, we went through one tiny farm village after another. I started to notice signs for various cemeteries, and they all had UK names and the word "farm" in it, like New Irish Farm Cemetery and Essex Farm Cemetery. While driving through one town, we almost blinked and missed this one cemetery. We decided to turn around and go look at it. By turn around, in this small town, I mean put the car in reverse for 30 seconds and back up.
The cemetery turned out to be a British World War I cemetery. It must have been recently renovated, because it looked brand new. But when I looked it up on Wikipedia, this cemetery has been here since World War I. These guys weren't buried here years later...they were buried as they died on the battlefield. The "middle of nowhere" town we were in was a field hospital for the British.
It was sobering to walk through, and know all of these guys died right where we were driving through. One of the graves caught my eye, though, because there was something stuck in the ground in front of it. As we approached, we saw it was a picture. The picture had been laminated to survive the elements, and showed what appeared to be the descendants of the of man who was buried there. The headstone said he was 19 when he died. The picture showed what we assume were his kids, grand kids, great grand kids, and possibly great-great grand kids. We've walked through various World War I, World War II and medieval cemeteries in our time here, and while they are sobering experiences, the fact is they are largely just names on stone. You think about their family, but you don't know them, nor their family, so you don't make a connection with the headstones you see. This was different. Seeing his family, through at least 3 generations, if not 4, was incredible. It was more than just a name on stone...you saw generations of people affected by his loss.
From there we got back in the car and continued on to Westvleteren. We eventually found it, but I don't know how we would have without a GPS. We went down all kinds of unmarked roads, through corn fields, and all kinds of crazy routes before we came to it. We walked in to the store, but unfortunately, they were sold out of the beer. So we sat down and had lunch at the cafe. Shanna was nice enough to play Designated Driver so I could have the beers. She had a sip to try each one, though!
After lunch, we hit the road. Well, Shanna hit the road...I took a nice nap for most of the trip to Zaanse Schans that Shanna decided to capture on camera. I also didn't notice until just now the plethora of crumbs on my shirt. In my defense, I was eating a snack in the car and didn't want to brush the crumbs off until I got out of the car.
When we got there, the Bed and Breakfast was fantastic. The house was built almost 100 years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, in 1680, and later became a small hotel. The lady who runs it was really nice, and showed us around. I couldn't believe we were sleeping here...walking through, it looked like one of the historic houses we've visited, but weren't allowed to touch anything.
After she showed us around, we walked around. The area is artificially created, but still neat to see. As the various windmills in the surrounding area closed down over the past 100 years, they moved them to this inlet. The result is that all along the river you have Windmills. I think there is around 10 or so.
Each windmill served a unique purpose, and they have displays in each one showing their original purpose. Some were used to ground up spices, create paint, build clogs, etc... Unfortunately most of them were closed on Monday, the day we were there. That was the only day they closed...go figure. We did get to go in some of them, though. The cheese making one was neat, as was the spice grinding one. You could buy various spices in there, and watch how the turning mill ground the spices down. In the pictures section, there's a video showing it. The shop that made the clogs was fascinating. They had a clog that was used as a reference, and a machine that used the "reference" clog to make another out of a block of wood. It's hard to describe, but there's a video in the pictures link at the end of this post that will better explain it.
When we were done walking around the Windmills, we headed across the bridge to a restaurant on the other side of the river. It was AMAZING. We started off with Potato Leek soup mixed with bacon and their warm baked bread with garlic butter, then we both had a pork filet rolled and stuffed with Brie. At this point it was pouring down rain outside. But when we finished dinner and walked back to the hotel, the rain subsided and a beautiful sunset came out of nowhere.
We absolutely loved the B&B. Our only regret was we only stayed there one night. We will definitely be back, we absolutely loved it. The next morning we got up early, packed, and hit the road. We still had one more stop.
When we first moved here, we visited a bazaar held at one of the local bases and met a lady named Codruta who was a vendor there from Belgium. She took old antiques, and either refurbished them, or made entirely new things out of them. They were meant primarily for use in the kitchen or living/dining room. Shanna fell in love with her stuff, but at the time we couldn't afford what she was selling. They hit it off, though, and have emailed back and forth occasionally. We're finally in a position where we can afford her stuff, and Shanna is thinking ahead to our house in Huntsville, where we are moving from here in 2015. Codruta has mentioned that she sells things she makes at the bazaars, but if you want something made, you don't just "order it". She meets with you, gets an idea of what you are looking for, and she makes something for you with her touch. It's not like ordering something out of a catalog. You give her rough guidelines, but she has the freedom to make what inspires her. Shanna loves her work enough that she was more than willing to do that. So we drove to Codruta's house in Belgium and met with her. Shanna and her talked for two hours. It was actually really interesting talking with her, and learning about her history. Her husband used to do antique restoration, and she liked to be artistic and recreate furniture from old pieces. Together, they made a business out of it and did very well. 7 years ago her husband passed away, and she considered closing up shop. But she found that being in her workshop, with pictures of her husband around, was a "safe place" of sorts for her, and she didn't want to give that up. So she kept the business open, and had to learn all the things he usually took care of. She got her truck drivers license, bought a new truck, learned the right way to load all her heavy furniture in the truck, and now does it all herself.
When we finally finished, we had one more stop. On the way into town, we passed a beer store. When ever we head to The Netherlands or Belgium, we rarely buy beer inside the city. They are usually WAY over priced, so we look for a supermarket outside of city limits, and go there. This place was amazing...they had all kinds of beers from all over Belgium, and for a fraction of the price in Gent. I knew I was going to love this place when we parked, and outside were crates of Belgian beer stacked way above my head.
We walked in, and it was like Christmas. We loaded up the shopping cart with all kinds of beer. They even had Delirium Noel, a beer I haven't had in years. We eventually checked out, and walked out of the store. As soon as we did, the guy running the shop locked the door and closed up. It was then I noticed they closed from 12pm-1pm, and it was 12:30pm. They must have stayed open just for us...I felt really bad, I had no idea. But while we were loading the car up, the store keeper ran out with a box and gave it to us as a gift...it was a set of Delirium beer glasses. I thought that was so nice of him!
From there we headed home. This trip was a lot of fun...Belgium and The Netherlands are amazing countries, and we always have so much fun when we visit. The people are nice, the food/beer is amazing, and the countries are beautiful. You just can't go wrong.
The next trip planned is in mid-October. That'll be Shanna & I's four year anniversary, and we found a place in Marrakesh, Morocco, that offers cooking classes. They take you to the local spice and meat market, where you buy all your supplies, then they take you back to the restaurant where they teach you to cook local cuisine. So we'll be spending a long weekend there. Check back after for the post!
To see the pictures, click here or any picture above.
