Friday, 28 Apr

Arrival

We came in on a bus, late at night (like 10:30pm). It was similar weather to Amsterdam, maybe slightly warmer, but just about as damp.

We checked into our (budget) hotel, where they literally don’t have cups or glasses in the room to use for water. You have to go to the front desk and ask if you’d like a glass. WTF, this is the most budget hotel.

Dinner

Yeah, not a lot of options in a quiet Belgian town late at night. We went to order pizza from this place called Beste Pizza. And to be honest it was fine… But we had a funny experience trying to order. Kat called them & quickly realized that they don’t speak any english, so trying to order a small margherita pizza was a whole thing. We gave up & I just walked over there.

They ended up being really nice & we figured the pizza out. But it was the first time since moving to Amsterdam that we haven’t been able to get by with only English! Basically everybody in Amsterdam and the whole Netherlands speaks English totally fine. It was kind of exciting needing to fumble through the conversation in Dutch.

Saturday, 29 Apr

We started with waffles, of course! We went to In Choc Gent and had some insanely sugary waffles.

Then we wandered for a while around town, before doing a little tour of the castle Gravensteen.

Gravensteen

The castle was awesome! It was really neat to go around the back where it was less restored and more crumbly.

Local bar: Dreupelkot

There was this really cool bar that I just wanted to call out, ’t Dreupelkot. It felt super cozy and it had these really interesting shots. The bar was exactly what I imagine the dutch call gezellig, nonsarcastically.

Night

We finished the night walking around town a bit, and we caught a quote in the stone of the canal that runs through town:

onder de maan schuift de lange rivier. over de lange rivier schuift moede de maan. onder de maan op de lange rivier schuift de kano naar zee.

under the moon the long river slides. over the long river the moon slides wearily. under the moon on the long river the canoe slides out to sea.

No idea what it means, but it sounds pretty awesome.

Sunday 30 Apr

Got waffles again from a different place, also delicious, called Passion. Otherwise, we spent the morning walking around shops. We bought some chocolate from two local stores, and both were decent. Expect a write-up coming soon where Kat rates her faves. ;)

Update: here are the chocolate ratings

Last modified on 2024-06-15