Gent

Gent was awesome.

This weekend we had an art field trip to Gent (which is 30 minutes north of Brussels, it's in Belgium). Its in Flanders, meaning its the dutch part of Belgium, so no french was really spoken there, which was a little wierd. It was a big town but sooo much smaller than brussels. It really felt good to get away from the big city life. I commented on how I really felt like I was in Europe. Every building there is so old, and the architechture is so cool and unique. There are also canals running through the city. It's so pretty, hopefully my pictures will do it some justice.

So yesterday, saturday, my entire art class got on a bus and headed to Gent. This sounds like fun but my art teacher likes to talk and talk and talk and talk. She knows a lot of information but sometimes it gets to be too much.It was also absolutely freezing so some long speaches at outdoor statues were tough. Anyways the first place we visited was this textile and industrial museum. Gent use to be famouse for the textiles it produced, but along with this went all the poor people who worked the factories, a lot of children died working in the factories. Eventually a socialist party formed that was appealing and eventually popular among the textile workers. Anyways the museum would have been interesting but we had an extremely boring guide who moved through the museum at snail's pace. We were supposed to go through the whole museum in an hour in a half but instead we went through one floor in an hour and a half. Luckily the rest of the day did not move so slowly. We then went into this amazingly large cathedrale. Then came my favorite part of the day..the Castle. I was laughing about the fact that the only castle i've been in before was the castle in Disney world. I have to say this castle is much better. Much more authentic. We got to go up to the top and get a great view of Gent.

Then the field trip portion of the day was done (it is about dinnertime now) and me and three other people had decided to stay the night so we would have extra time there. We booked a hostel but weren't expecting too much. We were happily surprised to find that the hostel was a few hundred meters from the castle and the downtown area. The hostel was so nice. We had our own room with four beds and even our own bathroom. It was really safe and clean and also breakfast was included. It only cost around $20 per person so we were really excited at the value we got. We also got a really great view! Hopefully we'll be so lucky in the future. Anyways after checking into the hostel we walked around a bit and found a place to eat that was a little off the beaten path. We kind of chose the restaurant randomly but it ended up being amazing food. Their specialty was buckwheat crepes filled with any ingrediants you want. It was by far the best meal I've had here in belgium so far. It also came with a great salad which is rare to find here.

After we were stuffed with food we went back to the hostel and rested a bit. And then we went out to experience some of the nightlife. Afterwards we tried to take some pictures at night and then headed back to the hostel.

This morning we woke up early and got breakfast (we had to be out check out by 10am). It was good that we got an early start though. First we went to this museum and we really didn't know what it was but it turned out to be great. It was free on sunday mornings so we didn't have to pay anything and it was about all aspects of Belgian life in the past. It was much more informative than some of the places we visited with our class. They also had readers in english so we knew what was going on. After we finished that we went and made a waffel stop, it ended up being the best waffles i've had here so far. Yum they were good. Belgians really do make good waffles. We then walked a fairly long distance to get to the museum of contemporary art. This museum is also free on sundays until one, so luckily we made it there at about 12:45 and didn't have to pay. (It's really wierd that many museums are free on sundays but I'm not going to complain). This museum was a little less interesting. Some contemporary art I really like and even though we tried to keep an open mind it was hard. The main exhibit was this guy who would paint a large orange quare over other peoples paintings. I'm not really sure what his point was but I certainly didn't get it. We didnt lose anything though, since it was free, so I'm not complaining. After the contemporary art museum we were wandering around and found this castely looking thing and wandered inside and it ended up being a museum. It cost 1 euro for students so we figured why not. They had a lot of detailed prints that were from the civil war era. It was pretty interesting because they were all like political cartoons.

After this we were all tired and decided to head home. The train ride was really easy, trains leave about ever 20 minutes from Gent to Brussels and it was only about a 30 minute ride.

Overall it was a really great weekend and I'd love to go back there sometime.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

-Bailey