The Savage Traveler: Tulip Time River Cruise Day 5

Wed. Apr. 9: Wednesday was our day in Ghent. This was the first place where the boat wasn't docked right at the town gates so after breakfast we had a short ride into the center of town. We got off at one of the churches that is being renovated and all around there is construction going on so our first impression was of noise and trucks and confusion. Our guide was a bit annoyed by all that but he had a good chance to point out how they are leaving the facade of the three and four hundred year old buildings and doing all their modern construction behind the facade.

Downtown Ghent

You can see the old facade, behind which will be all new construction

Later he encouraged us to go inside a Marriott Hotel on the canal and see how different it looks inside from out. The walking tour took about an hour and showed us the intricate canalways that still exist and are used in this active city. We bought the soft chewy candy known as "Noses of Ghent" in licorice and berry from a street vendor and walked through the old butcher's guild market that is used now for small shops and artists. There is a full medieval fortified castle right in the middle of Ghent with a moat that was used to protect everyone in times of siege but it was closed on Wednesday morning. We ended our tour at the church where they have the famous Van Eych triptych altar piece. It has been removed from the altar to protect it since one panel was stolen in 1933(?) and to keep it from the light. It is now in a special chapel area, behind glass and they are working on restoring each panel and redoing the lighting so we could only see glimpses of it but they weren't charging a fee as they normally would. The church and art are being restored as part of a grand plan that has taken years already and won't be finished until 2017. From there we had about an hour to wander as free time before we returned to the ship. The four of us had decided not to take the optional (and expensive) trip to Bruges (we later spoke with two people who had taken it and were disappointed in how commercial it has become) so we had the afternoon to relax and take care of some things before we had dinner in the special Elebres Restaurant at the very back of the ship. There they have the same menu all week and the chef prepares the elegant courses in front of a small group of 24 people. We happened to share our table of 12 with Beverly, from Nova Scotia, and Jessie and Carol from Texas so it was a very pleasant evening.