Western Europe: Belgium - An unassuming beautiful Gent

Korenlei

Years back when I visited Belgium the first time with my sister, we went to Brussels and Brugge. At that time, I caught up with K in Brugge but she was already living in Gent. Ha! To think that we could've met her in Gent as we had to commute back to Brussels from Brugge anyway. Anyway, I have remedied that as I was in Gent was 3 nights this round as K and M's wedding were held in Gent.

A regular visitor to Gent does not need to spend 3 nights in Gent. I arrived on Thursday but decided to walkabout in Antwerp because none of my friends was going to be in Gent till evening time anyway. Friday was K and M's wedding day and Saturday was to spend time with my friends. That, was the plan but it didn't happened as I was sick again. 3 times in Europe and I was sick all 3 times. -_-" It was only second day of the trip and I was already sick. Not exciting, though, one of my friends is a physician and I was a happy beneficiary of some medications that she brought along. So I pretty much spent Saturday in Gent sleeping except walking out to grab a quick lunch and dinner.

City Hall

I roomed with my friends at NH Gent Belfort, which is across the road from the City Hall to make it easier to get to the wedding venue, Novotel. Novotel was much pricier comparatively so 2 minutes walk had our winning vote.

Gent is a beautiful canal city and charming buildings at almost every street you turned. As you can probably guessed, the only plan I made was to keep my days in Gent free. We walked where we felt like, ate what we fancy.

Gravensteen

I noticed cool street arts around in Gent as well. Like this one which was taken from the bridge.

The ones below were all from a same laneway. I overheard someone telling his friend that to avoid people drawing all over the city, this is the 'designated' laneway to have all the street arts. I don't know if it is true though.

When in Belgium...

Eat waffle

Chocolates! This one is Daskalides but if you are going to try only one posh chocolate, try Neuhaus

Drink beer

And this is Gent's specialty - Cuberdon. There are different flavours on sale but I was told the original is raspberry flavoured one, in purple colour. Word of caution though, they are very sweet so share them!

The two short-listed place by my friend who lived in Gent was Pakhuis and Du Progres. Initially we were going to all go to Du Progres for dinner on Saturday (after the wedding on Friday) but we were not able to make reservation. I can't remember if the reason was Saturday night or we were too big group. So Pakhuis it was. The only reason my friend decided Du Progres initially was because it is cheaper comparatively.

Anyway, we ended up in Du Progres for dinner on Thursday night and bumped into my friend (the bridge) having dinner with her family! Haha. Gent really is quite small.

I shared a mushroom pasta with J in Du Progres, so we have space for waffle later on! Grin.

This was North Sea Fish “Catch of the Day”, skin side down, Tagliatelle “Vongole”, Shii-take and Courgette, Salsa with Tomatoes and Spring Garlic from Pakhuis. We also ordered some starters and chips to share. There were already eaten by the time I was passed to me, so no photos. I was also getting really tired and sleepy to which I suspected I needed more drugs to get me going by then.

Sorry - 1/4 effort on my part of photo taking

Side note: Still missing mussels from Belgium...