An Afternoon in Ghent

On our way home from the Netherlands, we stopped in Ghent for a quick visit. Ghent is a beautiful city in Belgium and we were excited to add it to the list of places we've visited in the country.

I love the buildings!

 We started off by visiting the office of tourism where they gave us a map that showed us the major sights and a walk that would take us by each one.

Such a pretty view

We enjoyed walking through the city and admiring the beautiful architecture. The river running through the city is very scenic and was very pleasant to walk along.

We stopped for lunch at Quick, Belgium's version of McDonald's... Unfortunately, it also tasted about the same as McDonald's. But, it was a quick meal and allowed us time to continue our afternoon in Ghent.

 We were excited to visit the Gravensteen castle that we had seen on our drive in, but first we wanted to grab a waffle. As we were buying our treat, we could hear a man selling triangular candy called "Noses of Ghent". He handed us a sample and we decided to buy a few to bring home with us.

 Our last stop was the castle. Originally built in 918 for the Count of Flanders. It was a pretty neat castle on the outside with lots of space to run around for the kids.

The inside had a collection of knights and swords, but also had a room full of torture chamber items that the girls and I did not enter. 

We were able to climb to the top of the castle and get a wonderful view of the city! 

 Overall, it was a nice break in our drive from the Netherlands back to our home in France.

We enjoyed the prettiest sunset driving from Ghent back to Paris!

Traveling Belgium with Kids: Brussels

We spent our last full day in Belgium in Brussels (Read about our other two days at Villers Abbey and Bruges).

We loaded up the double stroller and headed to the Grand Place first. It was gorgeous! I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this blew away any expectations I might have had. We happened to be visiting in between Christmas and New Years so there was also a lovely Christmas Tree in the middle and a nativity. The buildings were absolutely spectacular though.

Brussels town hall

It wasn't too crowded so we were able to let our toddler get out of the stroller and walk around a bit.

We then walked around the city and enjoyed the sites.

Tintin was created by a Belgian artist

Our two year old wanted two things this day: to eat waffles and to eat frites (but not at the same time luckily). :) On our walk, we found a whole street where waffle venders all claimed to sell 1 euro waffles. We stopped and picked up a couple (only the plain ones are actually 1 euro, but still delicious!) and ate while we continued to wander through the city.

Around the corner from all the waffles shops, we found Manneken Pis. The original statue was from the 1600's (and can be found in a museum in the Grand Place). This one is from the 1960's. There are many legends of how this statue came about. A couple of stories are about a child getting lost in the city and being found peeing in the street while others relate it back to various war stories that end with winning the war due to a child peeing on something (troops, explosives, etc.).

While he wasn't dressed up at all during our visit, certain times of the year, he'll wear different costumes.

When we continued our walk, we found the most charming toy store ever! It's called The Grasshopper and I highly recommend stopping in if you have children.

They had shelves full of whimsical toys and games. London and even Adeline both enjoyed seeing everything. It was also a nice break for London to be able to get out and play for a bit.

We got each of the girls souvenirs from here. London got some pretty little finger puppets of a king, princess, knight, and dragon and Adeline got some little fish bath toys.

On the top shelf on the right, you can see the finger puppets that we bought.

We enjoyed walking around the city and seeing all the buildings and sites. There was also a Christmas Market going on that we wandered through and enjoyed seeing everything. 

In the Christmas Market, we found the coolest carousel. I wasn't able to find information about it anywhere online, but I think it was built back in the 1990's maybe (Aaron asked someone and I think that's what he was told...). Anyway, it had all of these intricate animals that kids could ride on and also make move. Some were at ground level, but a great deal of them were above and had ladders to climb up to them.

We played it safe and had London ride in a little airplane. Still really neat and she loved it. 

Brussels was a great city to wander around. It was very stroller friendly and we loved walking around for the day! It was a wonderful way to spend our last day in Belgium and we hope to make it back out there sometime. We also greatly appreciated our friend, Quentin, showing us all the sites and inviting us to stay with his family. Everything was lovely and we all had a great time!

While we didn't get a chance to try anything, we were told that there is really great food down this little alley way.

For more information, check out:

https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/belgium/brussels

http://www.thegrasshopper.be/#!homefr/c1ii9 (Only in French or Dutch)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis

Traveling Belgium with Kids: Bruges

Our second day in Belgium (and first full day) was spent in the lovely town of Bruges. You can read about our first evening at Villers Abbey here and our last day in Brussels here.

Bruges was a great town for walking around. We had our double stroller for the kids and loved seeing all the old architecture. 

One of the very first things we did was grab a Belgian waffle. There are actually two types of Belgian waffles - Brussels waffles (which are what we would normally think of as "Belgian" waffles in the United States) and Liege waffles. Liege waffles (which is what we got) are denser and richer. We got ours with Nutella and it was a big hit with everyone. 

We loved seeing the city with our good friend, Quentin.

So amazing.

The batter before it's in the waffle iron (on the left).

Next up on our itinerary was to go see the Belfry Tower. This bell tower dates back to the Middle Ages and rings every 15 minutes. While there is a fee that you can pay to climb to the top, we just enjoyed looking up at the bell tower and listening to the bells.

From there, we enjoyed walking around the city. We saw the canals (Bruges is sometimes referred to as the "Venice of the North"), which were gorgeous! We had wanted to do a boat tour, but with it being December, there was only one or two boats that seemed to be running and the line was a bit too long for us. We still loved seeing the canals though and enjoyed our walk through the city. 

I loved all the buildings here! Some of the stores had the year it was built on it and we saw dates from at least as early as the 1600's. It was all very walkable and having a stroller was no problem at all! London was also able to get out and walk a bit too so that was also really nice.

City Hall

We visited between Christmas and New Years so it was neat seeing the town all decorated for the holidays.

While the girls napped in their stroller, we visited Michelangelo's Madonna and Child at the Church of Our Lady. There was a small fee to see it (a few euros), but it was well worth it! The sculpture was completed early 1500's and is the only Michelangelo sculpture that left Italy during his lifetime. It was removed twice from Belgium - once during the French Revolutions and once during World War II (part of the plot in the movie, Monument Men). 

We ended our day with getting some famous Belgian chocolate from a local Bruges merchant. It was fantastic and a great way to finish our visit to this wonderful city!

For more information, please visit:

https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/belgium/bruges

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges

http://www.belgianwaffle.org/belgian-waffle/