Belgium: Ghent

Hey there. This is Big Sis and I'm gonna tell you all about me and my family's adventure to Ghent, Belgium. There was so much that happened that day. 

First, when we first arrived to the town that we wanted to explore, the first thought it had was, "Wow. There are so many buildings." It was true though. Every lane, there was like 20 buildings all squished together. However, it was a super cute town square. All the churches dated to be super old and the hotels and housings were all still holding their old looks. It looked a bit like a fairytale.

After walking around the square and exploring for a little but, we decided that we wanted to go explore the Het Belfort van Ghent first. 

There were a lot of stairs and so dad, Little A, and Monster took the elevator, while me, mom, and M&M took the stairs. It was a bit of a hike up, but there were a couple different rest levels along the way. Each level told stories about the church and so we took our dear sweet time getting to the top. 

We met up with the rest of the family at the top, but I really wanted to hear if the bells still rang and it was 5 minutes left to the hour, so me, mom, and M&M waited just 5 minutes to hear if the bells still worked. Sadly, then didn't operate the bell in that specific tower. But it was still neat to see the music box and all the cords and read how the bells actually work using the gigantic music box.

It was a total bummer to not hear the bells, but the tower's view was super cool and totally worth the walk up the stairs. We walked all the way around the top and got some great views of the village.  

After leaving the Belfry, we wanted to see Saint Bavo's Cathedral and the famous Van Eyck's "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb" altarpiece. The church had a lot of really interesting arts and marble statues. It was very cold in the church and it was just so huge.  It was a very gothic looking church with so much stone and marble.

The vaulted ceilings were pretty neat to see.  It is always interesting to look around a different church and see what they believe in. There were many Saint's and the stained glass was very beautiful and the different sections of the church were fun to look into. 

After looking around the church and seeing all the different rooms and stuff, we got in line to see "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb".  There are no photos allowed in the small room that holds the altarpiece, so we put our camera away, bought an auditor, put on our headphones and learned all about the altarpiece.  It was smaller than I thought it would be.  But the history behind the different sections of the piece were so fascinating to learn about. I'm really glad we got to see this because it is considered to be the greatest artistic masterpiece in Belgium, and one of the most important artworks in the early Northern Renaissance period.  The altarpiece consists of 12 panels and is only about 11 feet by 15 feet (see, so small).  It was neat hearing about how two of them were stolen, the one with John the Baptist and the Judges one.  The audio tour told us how the person was supposed to return both of them, but only John the Baptist was returned and to this day, no one knows where The Judges are.  The history continued talking about how during WWII more panels were taken, and how they kept being moved around until in 1945 when it was finally returned but in a damaged state.  When they restored the alterpiece, a copy of the lost Judges was also made to complete the altarpiece.  This artwork has seen pillage, theft, fire damage, salt and war damage and I think that added to the overall super neat-ness of seeing it.  I'm really glad we took the time to see it.  

After leaving the church, we went on a river cruise tour. We explored the little town a Ghent in a really fun way and we learned a lot of history of the town. 

One cool thing we learned was that the fronts of the buildings were not allowed to change and had to stay in the historic Belgium style, but the back of the buildings were funny to see because they were modern with glass and stuff.  Our guide took us down one of the back alleys and told us all about how the fronts can't change so people show their personalities through the back. I'm glad the front can't change because it made this little town so original and cute.

The tour took as past old schools, butcher warehouses, an ancient library, and lots of other historical sites of the little city. We even went past the Gravesteen Castle which made us excited to go there, and we decided that would be our next stop.

After the cruise tour was done, we walked to the Gravensteen Castle. The castle looked huge on the outside. Many of mom's friends said that the castle was fun to explore so we decided to try it out. 

We got some audiotours and started to walk around the castle. The audio guide voice was really fun and it told us some really fun stories and imagination picture and plenty of cool facts to easily pass a history test of this particular castle. The audio guide was super funny and it's because we learned that he is actually a comedian in real life.  It made the tour so entertaining, I enjoyed it.

I have to say that the most interesting and weirdest spot of the castle tour was the dungeon room. Here, the guide gave the most stories and there are some really horrifying stories of what happened to many people that ended up in the castle dungeon. Anyways, back onto the good stuff.

We finished the tour and started walking in the direction where we parked the car.  Near the castle we stumbled upon another top remarked site, graffiti lane. There was more graffiti in this lane all together than the graffiti I have seen in my whole entire life. It was so cool to see all of the art. It was super cool to walk through. 

The alley went on and on and on.  We were enjoying the art and Monster decided it would be fun to just start running and he took off.  We had to run so fast to catch him and just barely got him before he ran through the end of the alley right into a busy road.  We decided that was our cue to go back to the car.  

As we were walking back to the car, Monster asked to be held and was whining a lot, so daddy held him, and he fell asleep within minutes of being held, I guess he was super tired after all the walking and stair climbing.  We walked past the famous Korenlei on the way to the car.  The Korenlei is the historical landmark that is an amazing view of the river and the cute houses.  It was a neat way to leave Ghent and say good bye to a super beautiful town and a really fun day.  I loved the little town of Ghent so much.