Day 3 – Bruges and Ghent

Today was awesome. In the morning, after a fresh portion of croissants (we are diligently working on the varied inventory of one of the station cafes) and Starbucks coffee we headed out to Bruges.

Georgia and I played the make-believe game on the way. I was a baby lemur and she was a mommy lemur trying to convince me to brush my teeth. After I whined a bit, she admonished me: “if you do not brush your teeth they are going to be just like they are now.” Pretty scary if you think about it.

The trip to Bruges was only 1.5 hours. The kids were in good spirits and so were we and we enjoyed walking through the city thoroughly.

Dan and I hardly remembered anything from our backpacking days and it was like discovering the city again. It is picture perfect and we took aplenty. Here are some.

Towards the middle of the day it started to rain and we sought cover in one of the restaurants on one of the main square. The service was very fast, the food was great, and the waiters very courteous. They even offered to warm up the formula. I forgot the name of the place…

It continued to rain even after lunch and after considering to scale the 366 step belfry with Georgia and being easily turned off by having to wait for the few other visitors to go down we headed down to Ghent.

The kids fell asleep on the way and Irina offered to stay with them while we got out and walked around Ghent a bit. Despite the rain, we liked it even better than Bruges. Some guides say that its charm is in that it is less picture-perfect and more real than Bruges. But part of the reason could be that its inventory of the beautiful medieval sites is at least as big but as a town it is also taller and more sophisticated.

There was a portion of the medieval fortifications wall, really awesome, and we counted 4 huge city-center worthy churches (would not know their names but the ones we saw inside they were equally impressive). And not to forget all the other beautiful residential and guild buildings all around. In one of the major square a huge TV screen and several mobile bars were set up helping the large crowd thoroughly enjoy the soccer game between Uruguay and Argentina. The views of the bridges across the river were great.

After we walked around for about an hour the kids woke up and Irina called us. We spent a few more hours in the city. It would be a worthy alternative to Antwerp to consider at another time.

In the evening we packed up and prepared for the next portion of our journey – onto Vilnius tomorrow. We got a banana for Isabella. She has been refusing to eat her bottled baby food and had grown sick of formula as well. She pretty much focused on the freeze dried bananas for the last few days and only ate formula at night (grandparents make a collective gasp). It has fun to watch her destroy the banana straight on the bed. She was completely covered in it.