Ghent Castle and Brugges

Post written by Carolyn (our second little Mountain Mouse) on Tuesday, June 17 with minimal edits from Mikaela:

Now it's my turn! Mikaela and Mom have been writing all the blog posts but this is my post!

     Today we went to the Ghent Castle. Our first real medieval castle. This is not like the  elegant châteaux. Whereas Chenonceau and Chambord were built for the purpose of being a "house," or at least a leisure palace, Ghent was designed with defense and practicality in mind. 

The gang in front of Ghent castle, photo taken by Grammy.

Ghent Castle

     The first room held showcases containing armor, swords, daggers, and a variety of guns. As we wandered through hallways and staircases and looked out arrow windows or narrow slots where you could shoot arrows out but no enemy fire could get in. The majority of the rooms contained or used to contain, devices used for torture. Another room held a replica of a guillotine, a contraption formerly used to cut off heads, with the original blade. 

A full suit of armor

A dagger specifically designed for stabbing

A HUGE sword. I think that it's taller than me!

Mom and I standing in front of the spear/staff/pike collection. Some of them are designed for battle, and others are mostly ceremonial.

A powder horn for hunting, covered in tiny designs.

A crossbow

This is a pocket crossbow, or basically the crossbow equivalent of a pistol. It's so tiny!

     After we came out of the Ghent Castle we ate bread and cheese for lunch under a statue in the town square. We wandered around Bruges for a while, then decided to go on a boat tour. We saw cool stuff like the oldest bridge in Bruges, a house built for the poor, the smallest gothic window in Bruges, lots of swans and ducks and multiple cathedrals. Unfortunately we were rained on, so we got some hot chocolate before calling it a day and heading home.

That's it for now, but the pictures of the boat tour will be coming soon!

Try, try again

So let's try this again. I wrote a beautiful post (I swear!) about our first day in Brussels, but lost it due to some technical difficulties having to do with the fingers and the brain. Miss M says I'm not a real blogger until that happens. So here we go...

Post for Tuesday, June 17.

After 18 hours of travel, we arrived in Brussels to reunite with the girls! I'm a little fuzzy on the details since we didn't get a lot of sleep on the plane. Basically, we came back to the flat, cleaned up a bit, then went out to old Brussels.

We first went to the Grand Place, or central square surrounded by the City's old Town Hall (Hotel de Ville) and various guild houses (bread, cloth, meat, and beer?). They were all built around the 1600s in the gothic style, but each had their own character.

I didn't take a ton of pictures, but I hope Chummy can fill in the pictorial gaps.

This is the Bread House, or Maison Du Roi or the King's House.

Cookie peaking through the door of the Town Hall.

Grammy and Grampa taking their first selfie.

From there we wandered over to the Manneken Pis, or Piss Boy. I honestly don't know why he is there, or why he is famous, but he is. I know Chummy has a picture somewhere, so maybe he can share it later.

This being Belgium, there are dozens of chocolate shops in every direction, and just as many shops selling Gaufres - the real deal Belgian waffles with lots of toppings. Of course Grammy and Grampa wanted us to have an authentic Belgian experience, so they treated us to lots of samplings.

Curiously, there are also lots of comic stores around the city. We never went in any, but there was at least one on every block we walked on. There were also several building-sized murals of Tin Tin and some gift shops selling Strumpfs, the original Smurfs.

For dinner we headed over to the Petite Rue de Bruchers. I remember this as enticing alleyways crammed with vendors selling fresh seafood - a mix between fisherman's wharf and a flea market. There weren't as many stalls of seafood, but there were plenty of barkers prostituting their restaurants. To be honest, we skipped Grammy and Grampas favorite place in order to get a better view of the TV showing the World Cup game of Belgium vs. Algeria. The service was not unexpectedly slow, but the waiters were definitely entertaining. After each goal and the 2-1 Belgian win, the waiters would run up and down the street, bellowing, blowing whistles, and belly-bumping each other. The sounds of celebration were repeated in every direction and continued for the next few hours.

Girls being girls in the Rue de Bruchers

There must have been about 100 mussels in each of out pots of moules.

The girls enjoy another classic Belgian desert, Dame de Blanche, basically a hot fudge sundae.

I can't remember the name of this place, but I always thought it was beautiful. Essentially a covered mall.

Brussels is a beautiful city, and I would gladly come back. But tomorrow we are off to Ghent and Brugge, on the Flemish side of Belgium.

And Now We're There!

Ugh. I did have this whole blog post written out nicely with the pictures perfectly spliced into the text, but then my silly iPad deleted it and I really don't feel like writing it again. We got here yesterday, but didn't have wifi until now. Long story short, we took a long plane (7 hours!!!!) and watched a lot of movies before landing in Brussels. We spent a few hours resting in Brussels, which by the way is a really cool city, before driving six hours down to the state/region or something of France called Brittany, where we're now staying with friends Gilberte and Jeremy. They live in this really cool house in the smack dab mettle of farm country that was build centuries ago (in the French Revolution, it hid a priest) and they have a huge sprawling green lawn with these overgrown hedges dividing everything, and fruit trees everywhere. All the food is homemade, handmade, and/or extremely fresh, and I mean everything. Bread, butter, jam, fish, hazelnuts, cherries, apples, sausages. Everything. Anyway, the post about today's adventures will be posted tomorrow because it's really late here, and even withe the time difference I'm tired. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures:

A street view of Brussels from inside the car

Brussels is a big mixing pot of architecture. There are old stone buildings everywhere, with tall glass towers rising behind them. Actually, Brussels is a big mixing pot of everything. All the various signs are written in Dutch, German, French, and English, and there are people from around the world covering every street. It's pretty awesome.

A French farm we passed during our drive. Brittany is definitely farm country.

Carolyn catching up on some much needed sleep during the drive

Since our friends' house used to be a farm, this is their barn

Yup, the garden is even complete with a flower-covered gate

While our friends aren't farmers, their neighbors are. These are their sheep.

Artichokes growing in the garden

The stone former farm house we're staying at

Anyway, it's late now, but more updates tomorrow!