Sunday, August 10, 2008

Hello from Gent, Belgium


Our Hotel in Gent
Hello from the Novotel Hotel in Gent Belgium.

Sunday Morning; August 10, 2008 (first travelogue of this trip)

Just a bit of background on this trip. A couple of years ago when we were visiting Bill and Jeanne Birt (Jeanne is Pat's cousin) back it Iowa (a favorite place for us to visit) we started talking about Europe and their desire to travel there. Since then we have been planning this trip. Of course, the timing is not good with the dollar vs Euro, but we decided to go anyway.

We met up in Dallas and flew to Paris. That is a 9.5 hour flight. From there, we took the train to Gent, transferring in Brussels from the high speed train to a commuter train. We arrived at the hotel at 4:00 PM in the afternoon.

Our hotel is right in the middle of historic Gent, Belgium (here). After we arrived in Gent, we met with Jos, a fellow that I used to work with when I made many trips to Belgium for Gates. I had contacted Jos when we knew that we were coming to Belgium since he has lived here all of his life and is a great “tour guide”.

Jos gave us a great walking tour of Gent, and we ended up at favorite restaurant of his that only serves spareribs. The restaurant, Amadeus, is located in an historic old building.

I will write more about Gent later, but it has a lot of history and many of the buildings date back to the 1200s.

We seem to have adjusted to the time change (“jet lag”). We forced ourselves to stay up until it was time to go to bed according to the local time.

Thats all for now.


1 comment:

Julia Spring said...

Hello from Alaska, sounds like you are having a good time. You used my trick for surviving time changes. You my be tired the next day, but you don't loose a day. Thanks for sending us your information.

We have seen alot of animals, have a ton of bear and whale pictures. The weather held for us to do our bear trip, but it has been raining. I wish I knew how to send you a picture.

Have a great trip, and we will follow you on the blog. Be safe
Love Jeff & Julia