So to get to Ghent, as we did only two days after Antwerp, we did have to get up rather early because we had to take the train from Antwerp. We decided to go on that day because the weather was going to be nice. While I was in Europe, it was super windy pretty much every day, and it rained quite a few days, so if we were going to go places we wanted to go on not-rainy days.
We did not take this advice from the tourism website, but that’s okay:
Okay so you know I visited Europe last summer to see Germany, but I went again at Christmas. Tharash had come to visit me the previous Christmas (for some reason I didn’t take any pictures of that? I guess everything was too normal for me to take pictures of) so I was like “trade!”, and I had never been to Europe in the winter, and I just wanted to see both more in-person Tharash and more Europe. But this really was a vacation to unwind, not to sight-see. Still, I took a bunch of pictures.
First I had three flights to get to Schiphol, so I took some pictures of Canadian clouds. It was interesting to fly over Thunder Bay, but I wasn’t at a good angle to take pictures of it. But it was interesting to me when there were sudden edges to endless fields of cloud, for instance. And the first picture you can see the shadow of the cloud, I think.
In an effort to not make you scroll forever while reading, I’m making many images smaller in this post, click them for larger. (It doesn’t help, you’re still going to scroll forever.)
We started the day by going to the local bakery across the street from Tharash’s apartment for a loaf of fresh bread. It was very popular in there, people lining up out the door to get their bread and buns and pastries, and smelled amazing. Then we went to the grocery store for cheese and cucumber, and I also requested some crackers as a snack. This was when I discovered that Tuc makes crackers that aren’t just plain salted crackers, so I got bacon crackers omg. They do use real bacon so they’re no good for vegetarians, and they are very salty. I loved them so I was sparing with them and they actually lasted until I got home again since I didn’t eat one every day. (My local Dutch import store sells paprika-flavoured ones!) Continue reading
Hello! This year’s ridiculous adventure took me to Belgium and Germany for three and a half weeks, wherein I saw a great many things, ate a lot of food, drank a lot of alcohol (by my standards), and took a lot of pictures (nearly 3,500, plus 500 from Tharash, though I’ve narrowed it down to about half of that (these are just mine and have not been edited in any way)), so these posts are going to be very, very long as usual. But here we go. I kept a careful journal on my phone to refresh my memory, so I’m arranging things by day like in my notes. Continue reading
