1/14/89 Saturday - a quick look at Ghent and Brugge

1/14/89 Saturday - Got up at 7 am and out the door by 8 with Lou Mirage, headed to Ghent to do some sightseeing. We started at the Cathedral of St. Baaf, which was quite large, with lots of marble. The priests’ crypts are ornate, made of marble and polished black wood. They have a Van Eyck mantelpiece here – beautiful! We wanted to see the Town Hall but could not get in. So we went to see the Castle of the Counts (Gravenkasteel), an old castle with moat. It's old and spare but fantastic.

We could walk around inside the castle. A lot of it is missing, but enough remains to feel authentic. I really love this castle.

It has not full of tourist stuff or gift shops, just bare stone walls, but I like my historic sights to show their age. There was a small torture museum inside, which I found interesting. From the castle walls I got my first good look at the tiled roofs common in this section of Europe.

On a side note, outside of the castle were a row of urinals out in the open, along a wall - this was the first time I'd seen that in public.

For brunch we had cappuccino and Belgium waffle with whipped cream.  These waffles are so much lighter than ours, and the cappuccino was very good. I bought a “Dark Tower” 1^st publication for Randy in this city. 

Then we went on to Brugge, where we had a lunch of crab salad and “soda”, which was actually bottled water. Brugge is where I first saw something close to a uni-sex bathroom, with saloon half-doors between the two sides, and each side had both urinals and closed toilets

We ran into Rita and Mitch in Brugge. Rita will be my contact, translator and roommate in Spain, so I was very happy to see her. We joined up and did some sight-seeing together. The architecture in this city is amazing.

I bought some chocolate here, and went through lots of lace stores – all so beautiful. I finally bought a tablecloth with 8 napkins made with hand-made lace for $133. In another store I watched and spoke with a lady making lace, which looks like braiding threads. She was around 92 year old; I bought a postcard of her and she autographed it for me.

We continued to window-shop; lots of furs and diamonds for sale here. Around 7:00 we drove the 1½ hours back to the villa, then out to La Cantina in Beerse for a mushroom and cheese pizza; it was pretty good, but a little light on the cheese. We paired it with some Chianti wine. Got back to the Villa around midnight.