(DAY 6)
I could have spent all day at the Museum Voor Schone Kunsten. The museum’s website has a nice showcase of its collection in English. My favourites were Hieronymous Bosch, Jules de Bruycker, and the Expressionist stuff.
Afterwards, we crossed the street and spent maybe half an hour at S.M.A.K. (the museum of contemporary art) and then headed back to the hotel for a break before dinner.
(DAY 6)
After lunch, our next stop was the Museum of Fine Arts. We had to walk a bit through Citadelpark to get there. I had fun taking photos while Eric hurried ahead.
(DAY 6)
Serve coffee with a bowl of chocolate chips!
(DAY 6)
We started our second day in Ghent by visiting Gravensteen or “Castle of the Counts”.
Just when you’ve fallen completely in love with everything medieval– the stonework, the hundreds of spiraling steps, the arched windows, turrets, stained glass… just when you start thinking, Oh I wish I could’ve lived back then! Maybe I should take up archery?… Bam, there it is: the Museum of Torture Instruments. Oh yeah: hot iron. Not to mention the cold castle latrine…
(DAY 5)
Stefan and his girlfriend drove from Brussels to Ghent to treat us to a fondue dinner on Saturday evening. I forgot to take pictures of the spectacularly delicious cheese fondue that Valerie and I shared (the boys had separate fondues, Eric’s was seafood). Here is dessert, plus scenes from the bar afterward.
(DAY 5)
With a brilliant museum pass, we got access to all the big museums of Ghent and unlimited rides on the city tram for three days. Our first stop was the Design Museum which had 17th and 18th century interiors on the main level and then Art Nouveau and Art Deco stuff upstairs, plus some weird stuff from the 60s-70s-80s. What made it even more fun were the plastic figurines hidden in the displays– part of a treasure hunt for kids. Wish I’d grabbed a paper for myself!
(DAY 5)
My, my– what a convenient shop to find just steps from our hotel…
(DAY 5)
We had trouble deciding which city to visit after Ypres: Ghent, Bruges, or Antwerp. We picked Ghent because the little tourist pamphlet from the airport mentioned Ghent’s vegetarian restaurant guide map. (The veggie option on dinner menus in Belgium is usually limited to pasta– I’d already eaten 4-cheese penne (twice I think), spinach canneloni, and vegetarian spaghetti… ). So on Saturday morning, we checked out of our hotel and took a train to Ghent for a two-night stay.
Here are pictures of the train ride and a bit of wandering around the city.
(DAY 4)
In the morning before our guided tour, we wandered around the streets of Ypres and paid a short visit to the Museum of Education. A quote from the tourism website:
This museum is housed in the former Saint Nicholas church, a unique Construction in Flanders. The Municipal Museum of Education outlines the history of education in Flanders from the middle ages to the present day.
