This blog post ended up really long because all of the misadventures in Ghent were worth sharing.
One of the biggest first world problems we have had since moving to Europe is deciding exactly where to go for each trip. Some choices are obvious (Munich, Paris, Rome and Berlin) to name a few), but the list of places we want to visit is incredibly long and deciding what to prioritize can be frustrating.
When we were talking about where we should go for Thanksgiving weekend, which included Chris’ birthday, we spitballed and researched a dozen locations and changed our minds multiple times. After going circles on the decision for a couple of weeks, we finally settled on Belgium for the Belgium beer and chocolate, and the two cities of Bruges and Ghent for the architecture and picture opportunities.
We were initially going to drive and bring the dogs since it was only about 5 hours, but after realizing that we would all be happier if we left the dogs at home with a sitter we opted for the train instead, which I’ve already written about.
Bruges
Bruges is exactly the type of smaller town we love. Similar to the French town of Colmar, it’s a fairly compact old town that features beautiful canals, historic architecture, and of course tourists. Since it’s a touristy town in Belgium though, it also had dozens and dozens of chocolate shops, waffle stands, and restaurants featuring Belgium beer and French fries. And, since it was almost Christmas season, there were a couple of small Christmas markets and several specialty Christmas stores selling all the Christmas tchotchkes you could ever dream of. It was lovely.
We didn’t really have set plans for Bruges though. We wandered around to enjoy the sites and to take pictures. We went to the French Fry museum, which was cute and fun. We walked the Winter Glow light festival one night after dinner. We toured an old gothic church. We hung out at a brewery and the Beer Wall. And of course we ate a lot of chocolate and French fries.
We happened to be in town the same weekend of a big soccer match, so there were also 7,000 Scottish soccer fans enjoying Bruges for the weekend with us, which made it a little difficult to find restaurants with availability for lunch, but we made it work.
Ghent
Poor Ghent. We got off to a rough start with this town. When I talked about our plans to visit Bruges and Ghent with a friend, she mentioned she preferred Ghent because of how compact the downtown area was. For whatever reason, this stuck in my head, and no matter how much additional research I did, I was utterly convinced that Ghent was smaller and quainter than Bruges,*** which is why I booked 2.5 days in Bruges and only 1.5 days in Ghent. It turned out that I was wrong and I didn’t figure out how wrong until we were in the cab getting to our hotel around 10 am. It didn’t help that the cab driver also chatted about how we were staying in the party side of town and we would be there Saturday night.
Then, as the cab drove off, we realized we couldn’t find the hotel, even though it should have been right there. Eventually, after a little panic and frustration, we realized the address was across the street, but it wasn’t a hotel. Despite specifically setting my search filters to only show hotels, I had mistakenly booked us in what was calling itself a B&B on booking.com — except they didn’t serve breakfast. They also didn’t have a 24 hour front desk, didn’t want you checking in until after 3, and nobody answered when I called the number listed on booking. Sigh. Now we were cold, hungry, and stuck with the luggage that we expected to leave behind the hotel front desk for a few hours, all while in the party area of a strange city. Perfect.
After a bit of irritated debate and several rounds of searching google maps we found a coffee shop that was open not far away, so we hauled our bags to one of the main squares and settled in with a warm drink. Eventually, someone from the B&B called me back and agreed to let us stash our luggage until the room was ready.
By then we needed lunch and we were frustrated enough not to spend a lot of time figuring something out. Luckily we had noticed a brewery near where we had coffee, so we returned back to the main square after dropping our bags off and hung out for a couple of hours to decompress a bit. By the time we were relaxed after enjoying some very good craft Belgium beer and food it was time to return to the B&B to get officially checked into our room.
The B&B was interesting. Our room was called the Shanghai room and featured a lot of Asian decor, including a 5 foot tall Buddha in a corner that was terrifying to see in the middle of the night. The manager gave us a tour of the room and explained what brand the mattress and couch were and showed us all the various light switches for the decorative and yet way too dim lights that all turned on in different ways that we never quite mastered. On the plus side, the room was big, the furniture was comfortable, the shower was huge, and we had a private patio with a hot tub.
After that rather inauspicious introduction to Ghent we planned to wander around a bit to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the town and check locations on a couple of shops we knew we wanted to visit -- specifically, a speciality mustard shop and a specific chocolate shop. However, as we were wandering we realized it was around 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon, and if Belgium was anything like Germany (which it was), none of the stores would be open on Sunday. Luckily we had just passed the mustard shop, which has been making a single kind of mustard for more than 100 years, when we had this realization, so we were able to quickly back track and buy a crock of the mustard. (Seriously — best mustard we have ever have and we would go back to Ghent just to buy more. (article about it here: Hidden Belgium and website here: Tierenteyn-Verlent))
The next store was a chocolate shop called Yuzu that a friend had told me about and that had been written up numerous times as a great chocolate shop to visit in Ghent. When we were in Bruges we specifically decided not to buy chocolate for our coworkers because we wanted to get something a little different from Yuzu, which added Asian and Middle Eastern twists to classic Belgium chocolate. With the realization that we only had a couple of hours until the store closed, we took off at an anxiety driven walking pace because it was at least a 20 minute walk away.
We made it to the store with plenty of time and decided to let the owner select a mixed box of the most popular choices for our coworker boxes. At one point I asked how we could tell the chocolates apart since they weren’t labeled, and he replied that we could look them up online and compare pictures. This turned out to be a stretch of the truth because half of the chocolates in our box looked nothing like the pictures on the website, so everyone got to enjoy a little adventure when they chose chocolate that could be anything from whiskey and tobacco to tonka bean and black truffle or coriander (cilantro) and lime. Luckily they were all delicious and all but one person enjoyed their random selection.
Once we secured the chocolate, we started the long walk back to our room and decided we wanted a beer to toast our success. I suggested checking out Dulle Griet, a popular Belgium beer bar that most travel sites and blogs recommended. They are famous for having a large selection of Belgium beers and serving beer in giant yard glass that you only get if you are willing to give up a shoe so you aren’t tempted to walk off with the glass. We knew it would probably be crowded on a Saturday night, so Chris went to the room to drop off the mustard and chocolate while I went to see how bad Dulle Griet was.
As expected, it was packed with a crowd of people hanging around the door. It was so crowded that it was difficult to see what was going on — just a group of people huddled around the door blocking my view of how exactly people were being seated. There definitely wasn’t someone checking people in and as far as I could tell seats were free to grab. I was just about to give up because of the crowd when I noticed that a two person table next to the door was about to be available, and since I was crammed up close to the door anyway I was able to snag it.
It was a terrible table — the chair for the second person was basically in the crowd of butts waiting for other tables, the door would frequently be open letting in cold air, and the person in that chair was constantly getting jostled as people tried to enter or leave. I wasn’t sure Chris would want to hang out if we were stuck there, but I figured I would wait until he joined me before making any decisions. Then… more luck! The couple at the table to my right, just a bit further from the door, was leaving. I asked them if I could have their table instead, and quickly slapped my purse down as they were standing up so I could slide over as soon as they were moving.
And then my luck trended back towards our more normal Ghent experience so far. As I was getting adjusted at the new table a middle-aged, kind of scary looking man sat down in the chair across from me and said “this is my table.” By now I had been at the bar long enough to know there were no reserved seats and no real line for tables. The “waiting” area was mostly chaos and while a waiter would point customers to an area with a table occasionally, it was mostly a free for-all. Plus, the table by the door was still available, so I replied that I was sitting here and they could have the other table instead.
Then things got uncomfortable because he didn’t want the table by the door — he wanted the table I was at — but I refused to move. We went through this routine a couple of times with neither of us willing to budge and with him getting angrier and angrier. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen and Chris wasn’t back yet, so I finally just stared at my phone and waited him out. It was a horrible experience. Eventually his girlfriend/wife was able to convince him to go and they both left the bar right before Chris showed up.
At that point the night improved again. We got to drink some truly incredible Belgium beers. We chatted a bit with an older French couple who ended up at the table by the door and watched them dip chunks of cheese in mustard — something that we had never considered before, but was obviously delicious with fancy Belgium cheese and mustard. Then a younger American couple sat at the table by the door and we talked with them about craft beer around the states, and chatted excitedly about all the beer in and around Portland, Oregon since they were going to be moving there after their Air Force tour in Italy was finished. After that tumultuous day we went back to our room to sleep and only woke up frightened by the Buddha a couple of times each.
Our second day in Ghent was much better. We woke up early and explored the downtown area and canals before it got crowded, and then found a coffee shop for breakfast. After that we did a tour of Gravensteen castle, which was built in 1180, and included a very funny, slightly fictionalized audio tour. Once the tour was done we tracked down some Cuberdons, a local Belgium candy, in one of the few stores opened for the day, then we went back to the same craft brewery we visited the day before and relaxed over a late lunch.
Gravensteen Castle
We thought about doing some more touristy things like take an elevator to the top of the bell tower, but we decided to take a longer walk to visit two other breweries we had read about. Dok Brewing was fantastic and reminded me of a lot of the craft breweries in Virginia with a big open space, music, and an industrial feel to the space. Next we stopped by Gruut brewing, which was unique because it doesn’t use hops in its beers. The brewery was much smaller and less inviting than Dok, but it was interesting to try their beers. By the time we were finished there it was only late afternoon, but after the stress of the previous day we decided to retreat to our room and enjoy the hot tub on the patio with a couple of bottles of beer instead of looking for more adventures.
The next day was our last day in Belgium and the original plan was for us to take an 11 am train from Ghent to Wiesbaden, which would have allowed us to spend a couple of hours exploring a little more. However, after the rather stressful train ride from Wiesbaden to Bruges, we decided to get an early start at the train station, which ended up being a wise decision. In the end we made it home safe though and our trip was a success. We will definitely be visiting Ghent again at some point to get more mustard and give the city another chance. We might return to Bruges because it was lovely, but with so many other places to explore I’m not sure we’ll prioritize a return trip for a while.
Next planned trips:
Rome in January
Lisbon & Sintra Portugal in February
Normandy France over Memorial Day
*** If you’re curious, Bruges has a city center population of 20,000 a city population of 115,000, and a commuter region population of 255,000. Ghent, on the other hand, has a city population of 270,000 and a commuter region population of 560,000.
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