My friend Bethany and I continued our trip through Belgium by visiting the fantastic city of Ghent.  Ghent Belgium has all the Old Europe charm of Bruges without nearly as many tourists.  It’s a university town that loves its beer but all of it is smack in the middle of an amazing historical center with some amazing architecture.

a large building with a tower

St. Bavo’s Cathedral, just outside our hotel

a building with a tower and a statue on top

St. Bavo’s Cathedral

Our mission was to find one of Ghent’s many beer halls to sample some fine Belgian beers but we kept getting distracted by sudden and amazing architecture!

a building with a tower and a bell tower

St. Nicholas Church

We found our way to a great beer hall where we had some lovely beers.  A note, though: the beers are paid for in cash every round.  I tried to pay with a card and was lectured for 15 minutes by our waiter about who knows what, leading me to go walk for 20 minutes to find a cash machine.  Wasn’t the biggest inconvenience in the world, but holy geez I didn’t feel like I had earned that lecture.  The better news, though: the beer was EXCELLENT.  The waiter was as knowledgeable as he was rude and we ended up having some great beers.  On our way back to the hotel we saw yet another random amazing building just sitting there on the street.

a building with many windows and a street in the background

No idea what it was, but it looked great!

We stopped by the incredible Ghent Pavilion for some pictures.  The Pavilion is a very modern installation that looks even more modern because it sits in the middle of so much Old Europe architecture.  To me it kind of looks like a Viking ship was overturned and placed on pedestals.  The wood decoration was a nice contrast from so much stone.

a building with a triangular structure

Ghent Pavilion

The underside of the Pavilion is beautifully lit with a wooden underbelly, it almost looks like a Viking ship was overturned.

a building with lights on the ceiling

Ghent Pavilion

I’ll end this (short, I know) post with one of my favorite pictures of the year: I got my tripod way down low and shot up against the wooden ceiling of the pavilion.  I love the symmetry and the beautiful lighting.  Ghent is near the top of the list of places I want to go back to in 2016 (a list which is coming soon, by the way).  Hope this brief look at an amazing town piques your interest a bit!

a close up of a ceiling

Ghent Pavilion

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