Last year when we went to The Netherlands to visit family, we took a road trip down to Ghent, Belgium for a night and strolled around the city for two days. It reminded me of a miniature Amsterdam, without the modern touches the Dutch are so great at weaving into their charming, old cities. It was quite lovely, as you can see:
Gravensteen Castle was built in 1180, and is right in the city center. At the time of my visit (last August) it was one of the oldest standing structure I’d ever visited. (However, I went to Rome shortly after my night in Ghent. America is such a young baby, yall.) Also, while in the castle, I saw a guillotine that had actually chopped off heads before. (Ahh!)
I was working on organizing my photo archive tonight and these reminded me how thankful I am to have these experiences and not even need these photos to know what it’s like to stand in a place so old and fantastic. Life is good.
Great post – i’m going to Brussels for a second time this summer, and was wondering if it was worth it to take a day trip to Ghent. Great pictures 🙂
Definitely recommend! It’s lovely and small enough that you can walk all over and cover lots of ground. 🙂