Week 9 June 8-June 14

First, a correction for last week's post: We unintentionally lied when we said the flower carpet would be setup for all of June.  It was dismantled yesterday so in fact, it was only up for a week and a half.  Molly swears someone or some sign somewhere said it would be up longer, but no such luck.

Dismantling the flower carpet 

This weekend, we headed to the city of Gent for a quick day-visit.  Gent is the second largest city in Belgium and the fourth largest metropolitan area.  During the Middle Ages it was one of the largest and richest cities in Northern Europe.  Since it was a major city in the Middle Ages, of course it has a castle.  Gravensteen castle was our first stop, as Tyler has never been in a European Castle!  It was an odd tour as there was a movie that you watched on the oldest iPod touches that can be found.  Each room you walked through had a chapter of the movie.  We thought this free movie (free with admission at least) would help us learn the history of the castle but instead, it was a weird soap opera like story set in the castle...not very informative and also not very interesting.  We toured the castle, which included a museum of torture devices and got some pretty awesome views of Gent from the castle roof.  All-in-all, a pretty good first castle experience for Tyler!

Gravensteen Castle

Gent from the castle roof top

That's a BIG fireplace!

Our next stop was lunch, because naturally a museum of torture makes you hungry.  We headed to the street called the Graslei, which is on the canal, and we enjoyed a lovely lunch along the water.  After lunch, we headed to the town center to see the city hall (all City Halls in Belgium are spectacular), the Belfry, St. Bavo's Cathedral, Saint Nicholas' Church and just generally take in the beautiful medieval architecture throughout the city.  We had the opportunity to go into St. Bavo's, unfortunately photography is not allowed but trust us, it was amazing.  There was a choir rehearsal going on, and we even ventured down into the crypt.  The amazing ancient gold and silver chalices, crosses and other religious artifacts emphasized the fact that Gent was one of the richest cities of the Middle Ages.  After a quick walk through Saint Nicholas' Church, we were ready to head home.

View from Graslei

Saint Nicholas's Church

City Hall

The Belfry

A balloon chicken, of course!

The great thing about Belgium is everything is so close.  We will definitely head back to Gent some other weekend, so we don't feel the pressure to hurry and see everything in one day.  Next week we will be sticking around Antwerp because apparently GIANT puppets are supposed to invade the city, and we can not miss that!