Tour of Ghent

Today we enjoyed sleeping in (there is a six hour time difference from here and home and I think it finally caught up to us) and then had a nice walking tour of the beautiful city we are staying in, Ghent.  One of our ways to save money when we travel is to find a local grocery store for breakfast.  They usually have a nice assortment of pastries and fruit and this one did not disappoint.  It’s also good to look for national brands instead of American ones because often times they are less expensive.  Today’s breakfast of a smoothie, fruit and two chocolate croissants only cost us 3.91 in Euros (which for the record are pretty close with the dollar these days).

Our first observations of Ghent in the daytime were quite favorable.

We walked down to the Korenmrkt, which is basically the Ghent City Center.

We stopped at a shop to finally try a Belgian waffle and it was everything I had hoped and dreamed it would be.  Chances are, I will be eating a lot more of these on our trip.

While in the city center, we walked through some pretty incredible churches.  We are big fans of checking out churches on our trips and the Ghent ones did not disappoint.

I stopped to light candles in one and say prayers for our kids whom we love and miss.

Our main destination for the day was St. Bavo’s cathedral and the church itself was quite glorious.

But we were most interested in checking out the Ghent Altar Piece, which was painted by Huber and Jan van Eyck.  It was quite stunning in person and our 4 Euro admission included a guided tour via radio set.  It was really interesting hearing all about the history and meaning of this beautiful work of art.  It was also fascinating because the Ghent altar piece is known by many as the most stolen work of art, and was hidden in a salt mine by the Nazis during World War II but thankfully rescued by the Monuments Men and eventually brought to Ghent.

After enjoying our Art History for the day, we spent the rest of our time walking the streets of this beautiful city.

We stopped by a chocolate shop to try our first pieces of Belgian chocolate.

As you can imagine, they were pretty delicious.

It was on the colder side today, so when we found a nice Belgian version of Dicks Sporting Goods we decided to rest for a bit.  It was a beautiful store and on the third floor, they had a free hot drink machine.  So Jeremy had a cappuccino and an espresso and I enjoyed a nice cup of hot chocolate.

For dinner, we used Trip Advisor and tried a restaurant called Greenway because it was ranked #3 out of 631 restaurants.  When we got there, we realized it was an all vegetarian restaurant that boasted the best meatless burger which Jeremy tried while I opened for the vegetable soup.  Everything was tasty and I was proud of us (especially my husband) for trying something new.

We got back to our hotel around dusk and I decided to go for another run.  Because I figured that the calories from our delicious day were not going to burn themselves off.

Running was a little easier today and I ended up doing a nice 3.1 which made for my first 5K in quite awhile.  It was pretty and peaceful and a great way to end the day.  Thanks for stopping by, heading to bed now!