Belgium and France

When I think of Belgium, I think waffles, chocolate, beer, and fries. And there was plenty of this in Belgium on offer! We had originally only planned to visit Bruges, however on advice of our friend Alejandra, she suggested that we visit Ghent instead. So, we decided to do two nights in Ghent and one in Bruges. This turned out to be a great choice.

Ghent

We booked an Airbnb for Ghent, right on the canal, a short walk from the old town. This was probably one of our favorite places to stay. It was a good size and well equipped, and our doors opened to a terrace directly on the canal. Sitting out in the afternoon sun with our feet dangling over the canal while having a beer was a treat. As we sat, boats of all types – large cruisers, smaller tour boats, kayaks, and paddleboards – would pass by. We arrived in the afternoon, so after getting settled in we walked a short distance to a well-known beer place – Dulle Griet. Situated on a large square, Mel and I ordered a couple of beers while the kids burned off some energy running around the square. The bar had over 500 types of beer, so I relied on the waiter’s suggestions – all were very good. Afterwards we enjoyed a Ramen dinner at a nearby Japanese place.

The following day we went to the old town again to visit the Gravensteen Castle. We have visited a few castles on this trip, but I think this one had to be our favorite. It was very reasonably priced and came with the audio guide included. We generally like the audio guides, but they can still be a bit dry. This one was totally different. The narrator was hilarious, telling all sorts of tales with a humorous twist. It made for a very entertaining visit. We grabbed lunch at a famous “frites” place. Belgians make great fries! Afterwards we boarded a cruise boat for a 50-minute ride through the canals, learning all about the history of Ghent. We even boated right by our Airbnb! We learned that every year they lower the water by several metres for a 3-week period to allow people to make reparations to their buildings. During this period, they find all sorts of items in the canals – mostly bikes thrown in by drunk partygoers! We followed up the canal tour with some Belgian waffles. A very complete day!

In the morning we boarded a train for a short 30-minute ride to Bruges.

Bruges

We managed to find a reasonably priced accommodation amongst some very high-priced options. We were again very nicely situated on the corner of a canal where two rivers met. Our room wasn’t ready, so we left our luggage there are made our way into town. Bruges was made famous by the movie In Bruges, a 2008 movie with Colin Farrell. It was a good movie, however the unfortunate result (for us) was that it turned it into a tourist hotspot. We went to the Bell Tower, but the price of admission to climb the tower was almost €60, so we took a pass on that (it was about €15 to do the same at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Venice). We walked around exploring the old buildings and cobble stone roads. We saw some workers replacing a section of road – man, that is laborious work! We stopped by a church before heading out to another large square lined with restaurants to grab lunch. Many places were closed despite it being a Tuesday (maybe it was a holiday?). We chose one that looked very popular. The food was very good, but it wasn’t cheap – not much is in Bruges. Thanks Colin.

In the afternoon, a little tired of walking the tourist laden streets, we went over to a beautiful park five minutes from our place. The kids entertained themselves playing soccer while we enjoyed a couple of beers. A large brass band was playing in a gazebo, making the experience all the better. Afterwards we went back to our place to rest and grab dinner. We searched endlessly for some reasonably priced options before finally finding one option for take away pasta a 15-minute walk away. This walk led us through the same area we explored before, however, being approximately 7 pm, the streets had largely cleared out. We reasoned that most of the tourists only came for day visits. We enjoyed our pasta back at our place in a patio in our backyard and watched the Fantastic Mr. Fox on Netflix in the evening.

In the morning we had an early wake up and grabbed breakfast at our place before heading to the train station to make our way to Paris.

Paris

Our train ride to Paris went without a hitch. Much of our train travel requires a few transfers (we had to transfer four times on our journey from The Hague to Ghent), but luckily, we have been able to make them all. In France it is normally required to buy a seat reservation at an additional cost above the Eurail Pass. They are usually nicer high-speed trains, and the advantage is that you are guaranteed a seat.

We arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris, and it was packed with people. We bought some metro tickets, stored our luggage in the lockers, and made our way to the Louvre. Searching online it didn’t look like we could get tickets, but I spoke to a friendly security guard, and he let us bypass the line to buy tickets inside. The Louvre is massive. You could literally spend days exploring it. Our attention span for museums is somewhere between 2 to 3 hours. We sped through several levels of sculptures and paintings. We of course had to do the huge line-up to see the Mona Lisa. Afterwards we wandered down to see Notre-Dame – or what is left of it after the fire. I had been to see it before just months after the fire in early 2019. I didn’t see much of a difference to the exterior, but I’m sure the interior has had a lot of work done. We stopped by an Irish Pub for a quick drink before making our way back to Gare du Nord to get our bags and head to our AirBnb. We had a lot of trouble finding reasonably priced accommodation, but we were quite happy with our choice – a simple apartment near Montmartre. The one knock was that it was on the sixth floor with no elevator. That might not sound like much, but with all our luggage it was tough. One day a plumber came by to fix a small leak in the toilet. He was a little overweight and by the time he got to the top of the stairs I honestly thought he was going to have a heart attack!

After dinner at home, we walked up to Montmartre – about 15 minutes away. We ascended stairways to reach the top and walked around it to the front where there were crowds of people taking in the sunset (about 10:00 pm).

In the morning we took the metro to Concorde station, just across the river from D’Orsay Museum in the Tuileries Garden. We walked around and sat for a few minutes in some chairs at the fountain soaking in the morning sunshine. It was very peaceful. The D’Orsay Museum was quite a bit smaller than the Louvre – which suited us – and featured many more recognizable artists – Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Monet, Manet, etc. Despite it being a bit busy, it was an enjoyable experience. I discovered one artist - Theo van Rysselberghe - a Belgian painter, who I really liked. We followed along with the audio guides which made it helpful to follow along for us and the kids.

We walked up the Champs-Élysées and had some crepes and sat in the park and then made our way to the Arc de Triomphe. We stopped by Ladureé for afternoon dessert – eclairs and macaroons. Meli was in heaven! We made a quick stop at the Arc de Triomphe before heading back to our place for a rest. In the evening we went to a local restaurant for some delicious French cuisine. Afterwards, at about 10:00 pm we took the metro to Trocadero to see the Eiffel Tower at night. It was packed with people and all sorts of hawkers selling sparkling miniature Eiffel Towers. It was a beautiful evening, and it was spectacular to see the tower at nighttime. We sat there and watched the light show while drinking champagne and eating macaroons. I’d say we ticked a few boxes that day!

Somewhat fatigued the next morning, we took the train to Versailles (about an hour away) to see the Palace and tour the gardens. We made our way through throngs of tourists to the main access. We had decided to skip the audio guide since we had the Rick Steeves’ audio guide (for free) already downloaded on our phones. As we made our way up the stairs, we found that the audio guide didn’t seem to be working, or at least we didn’t seem to be following it correctly. We turned around to make our way back down the stairs back to the start where the audio guides were. I was reprimanded by one of the staff members to go back in the direction we were following. She even snapped her fingers at me. I almost lost it on her. Nobody snaps their fingers at me. Using a huge amount of internal restraint, I resisted the urge to ignore her and carry on getting the audio guide. We instead returned up the stairs following the mass of people. We eventually figured out the guide and it worked well. It was a condensed version that only touched on the main rooms which was more to our liking anyways. We hit our two-hour tolerance mark in the palace and made our way to the exits. The palace was absolutely massive (almost as big as Drake's house), and, like the Louvre, one could spend days visiting all of the 2,300 rooms (no, that is not a typo).

People say that the French are very rude. This can be true at times (I’m looking at you lady snappy fingers) but our experience was generally quite good. I would always try to speak my Grade 9 French and as soon as the person would hear that I was trying, they would immediately change their demeanor and respond in a very friendly manner. I was impressed that I was for the most part able to make myself understood and at the same time understand the responses (for the most part).

After the palace visit, we made our way to the gardens. The entire Palace of Versailles grounds are more than twice the size of Central Park in New York. We walked past the gates, where people stormed the Palace during the start of the French Revolution to overthrow the monarchy. With the embarrassment of riches flaunted by the French Monarchy, it was no doubt that people were pissed-off and rightly so. We walked down through the gardens to the main canal which was in the shape of a cross. We rented bicycles and rode around through the grounds for an hour. The boys loved it! It was very picturesque and a nice way to cap off our visit to Paris.

As I write this, we are under the English Channel on our way to London to kick off our final three weeks of our trip exploring the UK and Ireland.