Today we did a day trip from Brussels to Ghent. We accidentally overslept this morning, which was very embarrassing since I had told Chiara and Alberto that we were morning people and liked to get up early and get going with the day. But there we were, rushing to throw on clothing to meet them so we could get to the train on time after having slept through my alarm. But even with all the chaos, Joel was able to take a couple pastries from the breakfast room, and we walked to the closest train station. We purchased our tickets for the trip there and back from a kiosk. For some reason, the machine wouldn’t accept my card even though I had no problems with it anywhere else (museums, restaurants, etc.) so Chiara used her card for our tickets. Alberto has this great app on his phone where he enters the can enter the amount of money, who paid and for which people and the app calculates who owes who money. So he will put the train tickets into his app and we will see who is “winning” as Chiara says, at the end of the trip then settle up.
Because it was very cold today, I think 4 degrees Celsius, so about 39 or 40 degrees Fahrenheit, we decided to walk to the closest train station to our hotel, take a train from there to the main train station, and then switch trains to one that went directly from there to Ghent. It cost the same as walking to a farther station and taking just one train, so we thought why not? It was a double deck commuter type train with the groups of 4 seats with two and two on each side facing each other. Both Alberto and I do not like riding backwards on trains, so we sat in the two seats facing forward and Chiara and Joel sat together facing backward. I dozed a little on the train while Joel at his breakfast pastries. We finalized our plans for the day and looked at the map to figure out where to go first.
The STAM city museum was highly recommended on many websites and although it was a bit of a distance from the city center, it was close to the train station, so we decided to do that first. The museum was in a very interesting building that was a mix of modern and very old. Part of the building was an old monastery that was at some point acquired by the museum. They also built a welcome building, as they called it, which was modern with glass and metal. There was a glass bridge that connected the two buildings. Here are a few pictures taken from the bridge of the view to both sides.
I am not going to go into as much detail as Joel did with the museums we saw yesterday, but I will point out the highlights. The first room we went into consisted of a large aerial photo of Ghent that was printed on the floor and up onto some of the walls. There was also a video montage projected onto one of the walls with photos of the city and a large mini model of the center business district of the city on top of it’s space on the photo in the center of the room. The photo was taken in 2012. We had to wear shoe covers into that room because we were walking on the printed photo. Along one wall of that room there were computers where you could interact with the map more and read a little bit about different highlighted landmarks or locations on the map. More interestingly though, they had printed maps of the city of Ghent from 1534, 1614, 1910, and then the new one from 2012. You could see how the city had changed and grown with the times and the textile industry, which is what established Ghent as an industrial city, really expanded with the industrial revolution. Here are the maps. One of the pictures came out very blurry!
After the initial room with the maps, the museum went in chronological order from the earliest settlers of Ghent all the way to present time. Because most of the exhibit rooms were part in the old monastery building, it was also interesting to see some of the architecture and design of the building. Basically, Ghent was originally settled by people who wanted to take advantage of the rivers for transporting goods. Initially that worked well and there were 4 different settlements within the area that is now Ghent. Many of the settlements changed frequently as people would move on and other settlers would move in, etc. As time went on and there was more desire for a distinctive city to be designated, Ghent was created. During medieval times, Ghent was the second largest city in the North-West region of Europe second to Paris. Textiles were what kept Ghent going. The wool was imported via the rivers and then it was spun and woven into fabric for clothing that was then exported. This trade was very lucrative and the textile owners, who were descendants of the free merchants were very rich.
I am going to stop here, I know it is in the middle of the museum, but my phone completely died and a replacement phone is waiting for me at home but I no longer have access to any of my photos from today (to remind me of individual stories and specifics) and will not be able to communicate or use maps at all the rest of the trip. So, I am going to do a brief summary of the rest of the day in Ghent and move on to the next post.
After the city museum we planned to go to see the Ghent altarpiece in St. Bravo’s church, but we decided to stop for lunch on the way. We found an all vegetarian place on the main road and all got vegetarian sandwiches/wraps/soups for lunch. I think the best part was Joel’s blood orange soda that he got. After that we continued walking toward the center of the city. The weather was so bad, it was very windy and raining. When we got to the center and there were many people walking around, we saw a large church and thought it was St. Bavo’s cathedral. We rushed inside out of the rain and were walking around looking at the sculptures and organ and all the other stuff that makes cathedrals interesting. But then it became clear that this was not St. Bavo’s. So we bundled up again and walked just down the block to the church we planned to visit. St. Bavo’s was huge! First we went to see the altarpiece.
It is called “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” and it is made up of 12 panels painted by Jan van Eyck around 1430 who is a famous Flemish painter. It is considered to be one of Europe’s masterpieces and has a very strange history. Over the years it has been moved, disassembled, reassembled, stolen, and hidden. Most recently, during WWII it was hidden in Germany in a salt mine and a lot of the paint was ruined from that. After the war, two of the panels were stolen. Eventually one was recovered, but the other is still missing. Because of the damage of the paint from the salt mines, and just from time passing, a workshop was created to restore the artwork. Certain panels are removed one at a time and taken to the workshop for restoration. Aside from the beautiful artwork depicting catholic scenes and saints, I thought it was very interesting that in the top panels on the end of either side, the painter added very small scenes painted to look like statues. Until we heard the audio guide tell us about that, I didn’t even notice those little paintings. Also, the altarpiece was designed to be closed for most of the time, with the two side panels folded in, so on the back of the flaps, there was other more plain, but still beautiful, paintings. The altarpiece was only opened for a few hours on Sundays. Now it is behind glass in a special room in the church designed for visitors to come see it. We also explored the basement of the church which was a crypt but also had some smaller prayer alcoves and religious artifacts. It was interesting to see the fabric costumes that the priests wore during religious services because they looked to be very heavy. I wonder how uncomfortable it was for them to wear all of that while leading the service!
We spent more time at the cathedral than we thought we would so it looked like we wouldn’t make it to the Gravensteen Castle like we planned. We decided to walk by the castle anyway to see it from the outside. When we got there, there were signs for the Gravensteen Winter Wonderland. We went inside to the ticket counter and were told that the castle was open until 10pm. We told the guy that we were confused because the website said it closed at 5pm. He told us that the website was wrong. So we bought tickets and went in to see the castle. Everything was decorated for Christmas. The castle courtyard was covered with Christmas trees and fake snow. There were blue lights everywhere too. The Winter Wonderland themed even seemed to be geared mostly toward children but we enjoyed it too. They had a story projected onto the walls in some of the rooms that would give pieces of the story and as you continued through the rooms, more of the story was revealed. It was a fairytale version of the history of the castle. Philip of Alsace built the castle and the story was about how he chose his heir. Chiara and I enjoyed the fairly tale part the most I think. We did the kid puzzles and tried shooting suction cup arrows at a target and failed miserably. When we got to the part of the castle where we could walk around the top and look out on the city, it was still pouring, windy, and cold. But we went back inside to finish the fairytale.
After finishing in the castle, we found a chocolate shop that also served coffee and sat there to warm up for a little. We shared a few chocolates and had some warm drinks. It turns out that Belgian food is not very vegetarian friendly so after struggling to find another Belgian restaurant that would have something Joel and I could eat, we decided to split up for the rest of the evening. Joel and I stayed in Ghent to walk around the winter markets and returned to Brussels on our own. Chiara and Alberto looked for a Belgian restaurant for dinner in Ghent and went back on their own later. When we went out of the chocolate shop, I saw a little cart selling pyramid shaped things that came in different colors. I wanted to ask what they were so we asked the man selling them what they were. He told us they are the “noses of Ghent” and that they are a traditional snack that originated in Ghent before the war. He said it was made from fruit boiled down and turned into a jelly then put into molds that look like a nose. He said the traditional flavor is apples, cherries and raspberries and is a dark purple color but that for tourists they make other colors/flavors. We bought a bag of the traditional flavor and walked on. We each tried one and loved them! They are hard on the outside, like crystallized candy, and on the inside they have a soft jelly like center. After walking around some more we ended up going back to buy more to take with us. When we got back I googled them and they are called Cuberdon and were originally made when a pharmacist was trying to preserve drugs by making a jelly and mixing the drugs into it and discovered that if he used different fruits he could make them into candies and sell them without the drugs.
We returned to Brussels on the train and picked up some falafel wraps near the main square. We also went to see Manneken Pis (the pissing boy) fountain. We shared a waffle with Nutella and whipped cream then called it a night.
Because it was very cold today, I think 4 degrees Celsius, so about 39 or 40 degrees Fahrenheit, we decided to walk to the closest train station to our hotel, take a train from there to the main train station, and then switch trains to one that went directly from there to Ghent. It cost the same as walking to a farther station and taking just one train, so we thought why not? It was a double deck commuter type train with the groups of 4 seats with two and two on each side facing each other. Both Alberto and I do not like riding backwards on trains, so we sat in the two seats facing forward and Chiara and Joel sat together facing backward. I dozed a little on the train while Joel at his breakfast pastries. We finalized our plans for the day and looked at the map to figure out where to go first.
The STAM city museum was highly recommended on many websites and although it was a bit of a distance from the city center, it was close to the train station, so we decided to do that first. The museum was in a very interesting building that was a mix of modern and very old. Part of the building was an old monastery that was at some point acquired by the museum. They also built a welcome building, as they called it, which was modern with glass and metal. There was a glass bridge that connected the two buildings. Here are a few pictures taken from the bridge of the view to both sides.
I am not going to go into as much detail as Joel did with the museums we saw yesterday, but I will point out the highlights. The first room we went into consisted of a large aerial photo of Ghent that was printed on the floor and up onto some of the walls. There was also a video montage projected onto one of the walls with photos of the city and a large mini model of the center business district of the city on top of it’s space on the photo in the center of the room. The photo was taken in 2012. We had to wear shoe covers into that room because we were walking on the printed photo. Along one wall of that room there were computers where you could interact with the map more and read a little bit about different highlighted landmarks or locations on the map. More interestingly though, they had printed maps of the city of Ghent from 1534, 1614, 1910, and then the new one from 2012. You could see how the city had changed and grown with the times and the textile industry, which is what established Ghent as an industrial city, really expanded with the industrial revolution. Here are the maps. One of the pictures came out very blurry!
After the initial room with the maps, the museum went in chronological order from the earliest settlers of Ghent all the way to present time. Because most of the exhibit rooms were part in the old monastery building, it was also interesting to see some of the architecture and design of the building. Basically, Ghent was originally settled by people who wanted to take advantage of the rivers for transporting goods. Initially that worked well and there were 4 different settlements within the area that is now Ghent. Many of the settlements changed frequently as people would move on and other settlers would move in, etc. As time went on and there was more desire for a distinctive city to be designated, Ghent was created. During medieval times, Ghent was the second largest city in the North-West region of Europe second to Paris. Textiles were what kept Ghent going. The wool was imported via the rivers and then it was spun and woven into fabric for clothing that was then exported. This trade was very lucrative and the textile owners, who were descendants of the free merchants were very rich.
I am going to stop here, I know it is in the middle of the museum, but my phone completely died and a replacement phone is waiting for me at home but I no longer have access to any of my photos from today (to remind me of individual stories and specifics) and will not be able to communicate or use maps at all the rest of the trip. So, I am going to do a brief summary of the rest of the day in Ghent and move on to the next post.
After the city museum we planned to go to see the Ghent altarpiece in St. Bravo’s church, but we decided to stop for lunch on the way. We found an all vegetarian place on the main road and all got vegetarian sandwiches/wraps/soups for lunch. I think the best part was Joel’s blood orange soda that he got. After that we continued walking toward the center of the city. The weather was so bad, it was very windy and raining. When we got to the center and there were many people walking around, we saw a large church and thought it was St. Bavo’s cathedral. We rushed inside out of the rain and were walking around looking at the sculptures and organ and all the other stuff that makes cathedrals interesting. But then it became clear that this was not St. Bavo’s. So we bundled up again and walked just down the block to the church we planned to visit. St. Bavo’s was huge! First we went to see the altarpiece.
It is called “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” and it is made up of 12 panels painted by Jan van Eyck around 1430 who is a famous Flemish painter. It is considered to be one of Europe’s masterpieces and has a very strange history. Over the years it has been moved, disassembled, reassembled, stolen, and hidden. Most recently, during WWII it was hidden in Germany in a salt mine and a lot of the paint was ruined from that. After the war, two of the panels were stolen. Eventually one was recovered, but the other is still missing. Because of the damage of the paint from the salt mines, and just from time passing, a workshop was created to restore the artwork. Certain panels are removed one at a time and taken to the workshop for restoration. Aside from the beautiful artwork depicting catholic scenes and saints, I thought it was very interesting that in the top panels on the end of either side, the painter added very small scenes painted to look like statues. Until we heard the audio guide tell us about that, I didn’t even notice those little paintings. Also, the altarpiece was designed to be closed for most of the time, with the two side panels folded in, so on the back of the flaps, there was other more plain, but still beautiful, paintings. The altarpiece was only opened for a few hours on Sundays. Now it is behind glass in a special room in the church designed for visitors to come see it. We also explored the basement of the church which was a crypt but also had some smaller prayer alcoves and religious artifacts. It was interesting to see the fabric costumes that the priests wore during religious services because they looked to be very heavy. I wonder how uncomfortable it was for them to wear all of that while leading the service!
We spent more time at the cathedral than we thought we would so it looked like we wouldn’t make it to the Gravensteen Castle like we planned. We decided to walk by the castle anyway to see it from the outside. When we got there, there were signs for the Gravensteen Winter Wonderland. We went inside to the ticket counter and were told that the castle was open until 10pm. We told the guy that we were confused because the website said it closed at 5pm. He told us that the website was wrong. So we bought tickets and went in to see the castle. Everything was decorated for Christmas. The castle courtyard was covered with Christmas trees and fake snow. There were blue lights everywhere too. The Winter Wonderland themed even seemed to be geared mostly toward children but we enjoyed it too. They had a story projected onto the walls in some of the rooms that would give pieces of the story and as you continued through the rooms, more of the story was revealed. It was a fairytale version of the history of the castle. Philip of Alsace built the castle and the story was about how he chose his heir. Chiara and I enjoyed the fairly tale part the most I think. We did the kid puzzles and tried shooting suction cup arrows at a target and failed miserably. When we got to the part of the castle where we could walk around the top and look out on the city, it was still pouring, windy, and cold. But we went back inside to finish the fairytale.
After finishing in the castle, we found a chocolate shop that also served coffee and sat there to warm up for a little. We shared a few chocolates and had some warm drinks. It turns out that Belgian food is not very vegetarian friendly so after struggling to find another Belgian restaurant that would have something Joel and I could eat, we decided to split up for the rest of the evening. Joel and I stayed in Ghent to walk around the winter markets and returned to Brussels on our own. Chiara and Alberto looked for a Belgian restaurant for dinner in Ghent and went back on their own later. When we went out of the chocolate shop, I saw a little cart selling pyramid shaped things that came in different colors. I wanted to ask what they were so we asked the man selling them what they were. He told us they are the “noses of Ghent” and that they are a traditional snack that originated in Ghent before the war. He said it was made from fruit boiled down and turned into a jelly then put into molds that look like a nose. He said the traditional flavor is apples, cherries and raspberries and is a dark purple color but that for tourists they make other colors/flavors. We bought a bag of the traditional flavor and walked on. We each tried one and loved them! They are hard on the outside, like crystallized candy, and on the inside they have a soft jelly like center. After walking around some more we ended up going back to buy more to take with us. When we got back I googled them and they are called Cuberdon and were originally made when a pharmacist was trying to preserve drugs by making a jelly and mixing the drugs into it and discovered that if he used different fruits he could make them into candies and sell them without the drugs.
We returned to Brussels on the train and picked up some falafel wraps near the main square. We also went to see Manneken Pis (the pissing boy) fountain. We shared a waffle with Nutella and whipped cream then called it a night.
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