It was only about an hour and a half’s drive from Antwerp to Ghent. It was odd that we couldn’t find an open cafe or bakery on the way at 9am. We arrived at the campsite in Blaermoersen, an area by a canal with large sporting complexes nearby.
It was a well run, leafy campsite and we were there by 10am. We took the bus into the old historical centre – the ‘Korenmarkt’ and found a hairdresser to do the needful (as they say in India) for Maurice and me.
We had looked at the weather forecast and saw that the following day was going to be a rainy one so we spent the rest of the day
exploring the city (having been given a good map with a walking guide). In between we sampled one sort of famous Belgian waffles (a crisp affair with icing sugar – and apparently the tourist version with fresh fruit and cream). It was from the oldest establishment making waffles called “Max”and the price definately reflected this. It wasn’t our cup of tea so to speak but at least we had sampled them. The Liege waffles were denser and not crispy and they were more to our liking.
We wore good walking shoes as much of the city is made up of cobblestones, albeit rectangular ones but still not comfortable on which to walk.
It was a fine day and there were many tourists in the city and sitting along the waterways which gave it a festival like atmosphere.
To make the most of the day we walked our feet off and ended up at Citadel Park to the south of the city where I sampled another of the beers from one of the 1000 breweries in Belgium. We couldn’t visit the city’s tallest building the “book tower” which houses 46kms of books as it was being renovated. Before the renovation they had to move the books so excavated three floors underground to house them. The city pavillion in the centre was a contemporary structure with the bell tower on one side and St Nicholas’ church on the other. All throughout the city centre and along the canals were many medieval streetscapes.
We happened to meet up again with a lovely Romanian, Alin who we met on our walking tour of Antwerp. We caught the tram back to the city centre and made our way back exhausted to the campsite about 7pm while it was still light.
We were on the money as the following day it started to pour before we got up and continued for most of the day so it was a relaxing one with me doing the washing and Maurice washing all the van windows and sitting in the cafe which had some strange fare – dagsoep, spaghetti scampi curry and toast kaanibal garni. We had a snack of fries and I tried another blond beer.
We had a bit of a drama in the campsite one night. We were woken by a lot of noise around midnight. A large tree branch had partially fallen near our next door neighbours and they had called emergency services who set up their floodlights and used a long ladder and a chainsaw to cut down the offending
branch. We didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.