The World Cup and Ghent, Belgium

Hello, all,

These paragraph are out of order because the blog site Isn't doing what I want it to do.

 we highly recommend you visit Ghent.  I think it will be the next hot spot.  It's beautiful, lots to see, shopping, restaurants,great beer and not overwhelming. They're getting ready for a music festival next week which will bring in thousands of people. It's now a huge college town with 70,000 students. Two girls on our boat cruise were from William and Mary and one of them was from Roanoke.  Its a small world full of really wonderful people.

I am relating this story; on the Chunnel I spoke with a Scotsman and I remarked how kind everyone had been.  He said, I'm sure they were. No offense because I'm sure you're a nice person, but you're not dark, and you're not intending to stay so I'm sure they were happy to take your money and wish you a happy voyage. What could I do but laugh, but, despite his truth, the world is full of wonderful,people and we tend to forget that.

Tomorrow, off to Waterloo to see where Napoleon met his defeat and then on to Bastogne, the center of WWII Battle of the Bulge.

Cheers!  the beginning of this blog starts below.


Cham and I spent one night in Paris at a holiday inn across from the Gare d'Est.  Not only have we managed to be here for Brexit, but we also managed to be in town for the Germany vs France game.  Wow, what a night!  it's usually pretty noisy around the train station, but they celebrated into the wee hours of the morning. We watched the match with truly a cross section of the world,  table of black Africans in front of us were quietly rooting for Germany, the elderly African behind us was vocally supporting France, a middle eastern who was smoking outside while watching the game from the window was emotionally supporting France. We were very glad to participate in the comoradery.

After a round about trip using the metro, we arrived at the airport and picked up the car.  Because our little Fiesta wasn't ready for pick up yet,,they upgraded us to a bmw, very, very nice.  We got out of the airport with little trouble onto the 81 north of France.  The truck traffic was pretty amazing, but I love how they make them travel in the right lane.  Makes it a lot easier.  After almost three hours, we found ourselves at our apt. in Ghent. We were disappointed when we couldn't book in Bruges, but turns out it was a God send. Our apt had parking right out front, we had an elevator, a small balcony and a 10 minute walk to the city center. That evening when we walked to dinner, honestly, it was a little eerie. Extremely quiet. We felt like we were on a movie set and thought, what have we done, but when we got to the city center, wow, totally different world.  I had Ghent fish casserole, basically fish stew, which I've now had but probably won't get again.  Yesterday morning we took off walking for a full day.

Ghent is built on a river and a canal. in the 1100's it was second in population to Paris. It developed one of, if not the first, merchant class systems in the world.  they received much of their wealth from beer, fabric goods and shipping.  The guilds were incredibly powerful.  so much somewhat when Charles V wanted to raise taxes, the merchants stubbornly  fought with him about it so he had 25 of the most prominent citizens beheaded and made another 100 walk barefooted through the streets with only their robes on and a noose around their neck.  The emblem of a proud citizen of Ghent is now the noose. I'm glad we found this out yesterday because we saw them installing a bronze of a hanging man on a building and wondered about the art aesthetic. So glad we found out the entire story!  We a took a boat cruise which was very enlightening.  I'm including a picture of a sculpture of Gabriel getting ready to blow his horn. It was installed in the 80's as a warning against air pollution. When the. air becomes so bad that the Angels can't breathe, Gabriel will blow his horn and that will be the end of the world.

We thought about driving to Bruges this a.m. because it's only a half hour away, but realized we still had some things to do so we continued to explore today.I make Belgian waffles, or I thought I made them until we shared some today.  I don't know what the secret is but they're fabulous. we went to the cathedral to see the Van Eck's Ghent altar piece.  very interesting history.  it's been sold and stolen about 8 times since 1462.  part of it was stolen in 1934 and it still hasn't been recovered.  Amazing cathedral, fairly plain with soaring ceilings and mid way stained class and the upper pArt clear. A men's chorus had a concert at 3:00 p.m. so that was an additional treat.