Got up a little before 7, intending to go our for a 30 minute run. Headed over to the city park and ran around a number of trails there, heading two times up and over the bridge. Then I headed out of the park, thinking that I was generally headed back toward the train station. Mistake #1. I was actually headed in the opposite direction. When I figured it out, I made the second mistake in picking a street to take me back, instead of just turning around and retracing my route. That ended up getting me by another park that I thought was the city park. I looked more closely at the map and determined the two streets to take back to the train station. It was a slog, but I finally got my bearings. By this time, my legs were feeling it, so I settled into a steady pace and got back to the flat. I ended up running a 10k for the first time in I don't know how long. Took me a little less than an hour, and about 10k steps.
Avg pace = 8:53/mile
Total distance = 6.34 miles
Elapsed time = 56:19
Avg heartrate = 160 bpm
I got back to the flat, and we chose to take a train to Ghent that left Antwerp Centraal station at 9:51. So there was plenty of time to take a hot shower, much needed, clean up the place, and pack everything up. Buying the train tickets went smoothly, as did getting on the train, so no drama there. It was raining in Ghent when we got off the train, and we had some time to kill before we could stop by our Airbnb and drop off our luggage. So we found a café and had a coffee. The rain had let up a little by the time we started walking again. Ann slipped in the gravel on the way over the canal and skinned her knee. But it wasn't serious. We got to the Airbnb okay, not too much trouble figuring out how to get into the flat. Dropped our bags off but kept our tablets with us. Then we headed into central Ghent, walked around a little bit, then decided on pizza for lunch after signing up for a free walking tour. While we were waiting for the pizza, I got a text saying our tour time had moved to 1:30. That was actually better for us. We finished lunch quickly and headed over to the meet-up spot. It had started to rain a little harder, but we were pretty well prepared for this amount of rain. Here are my notes taken during the tour:
Kasia was our guide.
120k people in Bruges, 270k in Ghent, fo which 80k are students.
Three main towers in one photo are:
St Nicholas' church from 13th century, with a dragon at top of tower. Dragon taken from Bruges after successful battle, originally from Constantinople during Crusades.
Bell tower for the same church,, where you can climb to the top for a nice panoramic view of the city.
St Bavo's cathedral, which houses a very important painting. Adoration painting in cathedral by two brothers from Bruges. Both sides of panels painted, one panel is not original.
St Michael's bridge, near where the tour started, dates from 20th century, 1909. Same year as St Peter's train station. Ghent was the host of an international expo in 1913, thus the building spree.
Mini Ben tower, for the same time period, is a loose copy of Big Ben.
In 13th-14th century, Ghent was second biggest city in Europe after Paris, it was a cloth manufacturing center from sheep wool mostly from England. Came to an end in 16th century with higher English taxes imposed. Also grain imported from France, hard to grow grain nearby due to flooding. Small tax building across river from Marriott hotel.
Marriott hotel building has swans facing apart from each other on facade. Not a symbol of love and togetherness. Swan looking to left was symbol of alcohol, swan to right was a symbol of ladies. It was a brothel back in the old days.
Castle hosted a battle in 1949 when 140 students occupied the castle in protest of higher alcohol prices. Rotten fruit was thrown by students against water cannons by police. Price increase lowered from 25% to 10%.
Gray building with scary face facade was originally a meat market. National dish is beef stew originally made from suspect leftover beef cuts, cooked in beer to kill bacteria.
Two little houses, Sisters of Mercy poor house on the left, house of music party house on right.
Friday Market Square was main square in medieval times. Jacob van Arteveld was Ghent's most famous historical figure, when city had to be in the middle of 100 Years War between England and France. Eventually sided with English because of cloth trade. Was murdered by people who suspected his motives after a trip to see the English king.
Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor born in Ghent. He started to build city hall but ran out of money due to diversion of funds for waging war with Italy. Picture of building with two different architecture styles. He was born in 1500.
It rains on average 250 days a year in Ghent.
Kwak beer, you have to take off one of your shoes as deposit for unique beer glass.
Ghent named after word indicating a confluence of two rivers.
After the tour, we walked fairly quickly through the cathedral, skipping the expense of seeing the famous painting. Then we walked over to Sophia Chocolates and got some chocolates, with a couple of extras thrown in because of tickets we got from the tour guide. Used two other tickets to get samples of two beers from the Arteveld Brewery. I was starting to run out of gas by this point, so we decided on one last thing to see, St Michael's church. We spent more time walking through that one, then started heading back to the flat. It was raining fairly steadily by then, so Ann suggested we stop and get dinner food at the market. Good idea. It had cleared up by the time we were done, and it was a short walk back, thankfully. Fairly light dinner.
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