When we were planning our trip back in California, we were thinking of spending two full days in Belgium – one in Brugge and another in Brussels. Finding that hotels in both were expensive, I started wondering if we could find some smaller and less touristy place half-way between the two and came across Ghent on the map (“Gent” in Dutch), which I sort of heard about before as an old town. None of our guide books mentioned anything about Ghent, but I found a few pictures on the web and it looked pleasant. We found a bed-and-breakfast in Ghent for 35 euros a night, and made a reservation for three nights, thinking we'll come there in the evening, go to Brugge next day, to Brussels the day after and take off for Paris after the third night, probably spending a couple of hours looking at Ghent itself at some point. When we showed up in Ghent in the evening, however, it was love at first sight, even though we had the hardest time finding out bed-and-breakfast, getting repeatedly lost on narrow one-way streets paved with cobble-stone. However, the sights of the churches and a castle in Ghent made us think that we should at least spend some time there in the morning or maybe even consider staying there an extra night so that we could spend a whole day in Ghent.

The pictures above are just three of the hundreds that I took in Ghent the next day. You will find many more pictures of Ghent in the next few posts.