Our apartment in Gent. (2nd floor) Our cats love the funky windows. The Leie River just down the street from our apartment.
The things we love so far of our lives in Belgium, the cycling, the beer, and the friets!
We have been living in Gent for two months now, and we are loving it! It is a town filled with culture, and festivities, and many good places to eat and ride bikes (our favorite things!) It is considered one of the hippest towns of Europe, and the most artistic and cultural with it’s university, and many museums, and festivals. The flemish architecture dating mostly from the middle ages is very beautiful and interesting, and the two rivers of Gent, the Schelde, and the Leie and their canals are lovely and on so many afternoons we stroll around enjoying the city.
We have gotten into a routine of going swimming at a local pool. The building which houses this pool is a beautiful belle époque building and the pool was recently renovated. Sometimes it’s crowded so we have to swim around other swimmers, but it is still good exercise. We have taken up the old European tradition of shopping each day for our meals, so that also has become part of our routine for the day. In the morning we decide what we will be making for that day, and then we either walk or bike to the stores, or outdoor markets. We spend our afternoons reading and catching up with messages, and emails. We have been trying to go to a museum in town once a week, and out to lunch or dinner in a new restaurant once a week ( we don’t want to go over board in spending our retirement money ;)). We have found a wonderful movie theatre that we have been to a few evenings which plays a lot of indie and foreign films and has 4 small theaters and a lovely cafe, bar attached to the theatre. We also have visited some places outside of Gent by train, (and we even took our bikes on the train) Brussels, Brugge, and Damme in Belgium and to Sluis and Limburg in the Netherlands, and we rented a car to go to a boat show in Amsterdam, and bought our boat (more about that later!)
It has been a wonderful experience so far with only a few mishaps and difficulties which I will talk about next time.
A bientôt!
Tes amis,
Liz and Chris
We have gotten into a routine of going swimming at a local pool. The building which houses this pool is a beautiful belle époque building and the pool was recently renovated. Sometimes it’s crowded so we have to swim around other swimmers, but it is still good exercise. We have taken up the old European tradition of shopping each day for our meals, so that also has become part of our routine for the day. In the morning we decide what we will be making for that day, and then we either walk or bike to the stores, or outdoor markets. We spend our afternoons reading and catching up with messages, and emails. We have been trying to go to a museum in town once a week, and out to lunch or dinner in a new restaurant once a week ( we don’t want to go over board in spending our retirement money ;)). We have found a wonderful movie theatre that we have been to a few evenings which plays a lot of indie and foreign films and has 4 small theaters and a lovely cafe, bar attached to the theatre. We also have visited some places outside of Gent by train, (and we even took our bikes on the train) Brussels, Brugge, and Damme in Belgium and to Sluis and Limburg in the Netherlands, and we rented a car to go to a boat show in Amsterdam, and bought our boat (more about that later!)
It has been a wonderful experience so far with only a few mishaps and difficulties which I will talk about next time.
A bientôt!
Tes amis,
Liz and Chris