Europe 2023, August 23

Another run before breakfast, a similar route to yesterday but I took a wrong turn by mistake towards the ports, realised soon enough but decided to keep going and it turned out to be a good route.

I had a day return ticket booked for Ghent, the good thing was that it wasn't fixed to a specific train in either direction. I finished breakfast and had about 10 minutes until the next train, there was a bit of a gap for the later one so had to run to the station.

The ticket said class 2 but I had no idea how to tell which seats were class 1 or 2. After sitting down I did some research on my phone and found out it's marked on the side of the carriage with a not-so-obvious yellow line. I was pretty sure I was in class 2 anyway by the amount of people, but nobody checked tickets in either direction anyway.

Got off as Sint Pieters station which is a few kilometres south of the city so had to get a tram the rest of the way. I  got a daily ticket for the tram from the machine but that was never validated or checked either. The tram line going in the opposite direction ended at Flanders Expo which sounded fun.

Instead I got the tram up to Gravensteen also known as The Castle Of The Counts. It's one of those fairly standard old castles with an admission fee and a self-paced audio guide. I listened to most of the audio but usually ended up skipping before the end of each chapter. It was a very strange presentation that tried to add a bit of humour, at one point randomly going off topic to discuss yoghurt use by dates.

There was a bit to see around the castle and a few levels to get up to the roof, I liked some of the artwork the most. I sent a bit over an hour there then walked back into the city centre that wasn't far away.

Had a look down Graffiti Street which was very disappointing, wasn't any good graffiti just random tagging you'd see all over Melbourne. The other end of the street cam out near Vrijdagmarkt Square which means Friday market, so didn't have anything happening on a Wednesday.

Then found a magnet in a souvenir store that was also selling a small amount of Tintin stuff, it wasn't very expensive stuff but was all hidden behind a glass cabinet for some reason.

Walked around some of the city centre landmarks:

• Belfort
• St Nicholas Church
• St Bavo's Cathedral
• St Michael's Bridge - seems not much different to the many other bridges crossing the river

I'd found a website listing a bunch of actual proper street art, rather than graffiti, but they were all quite far to the north and west of the city.

I started on my way back towards the train station but got off the tram one stop early and walked through Citadel Park before getting the train back. By chance I also happened to come across a cafe called Paul's Boutique on the way - which is the name of a Beastie Boys album, not sure if it was intentional or not.

In summary a good short trip to a small city, I wasn't there long enough to really explore the rest of the city.

Antwerp

• 8 out of 10

Good

• Not too crowded
• Reasonable amount of things to do
• Walkable city

Bad

• Bicycles speeding through intersections
• Limited drink options

Missed Out

• Hobokense Polder nature preserve
• Metro - never got to use it
• Red Star Line museum
• Rivierenhof ParkZoo

Ghent

• 6 out of 10

Good

• Close to Antwerp
• Few less bicycles
• Lots of old buildings
• Trams run through narrow city streets

Bad

• Less activities

Missed Out

• STAM museum - temporarily closed
• Street art