Sunday, June 22: Brugge to Ghent, Belgium

Awoke to cloudy skies and 62 degrees – great sleeping temps needing no heat or air conditioning. I cannot get my IPhone to work as a hotspot,so no internet for computer, and will contact the phone company on Monday for assistance.

Getting fresh water here is turning out to be difficult. They have spigots every 10 campsites, but they are on the one lane driveway and we clog the whole place up when trying to load up with water. The water pressure is very low. So, Jack moved the RV to the first spigot on the driveway so we were blocking the fewest folks and luckily, the water pressure was much better and we were able to fill the tank in about 10 minutes.

Next up was figuring out how to dump our gray (kitchen and shower water) and black (toilet) tanks. In the States, we typically dump both in the same tank, but this campground has two different tanks and their black tank is very small because it is meant for small portable chemical toilets. Fortunately, the man at the desk told us he could open the large tank where their other tanks drain to so we could dump both our tanks there. Easy fix this time, but what about the next campground?

Full fresh water and empty waste tanks and we are heading to Ghent. Before we leave Brugge, we stopped at the ancient wooden windmills just outside the moat of Brugge. There are three windmills on a hill and we climbed up to see them and the view of Brugge's church spires in the distance.

The maps and GPS were easy to follow on the way to Ghent as long as we stayed on the highway, but we decided to go side roads and quickly got lost in the rural countryside. We enjoyed driving through the cornfields and potatofields (I think), although they are small fields compared to the huge American farms. The houses are all brick and the architecture looks like what I always thought of as Dutch with tiled, steep roofs with stepped fronts. Every house has massive shrubs surrounding the house to provide privacy and they are sheared to perfection. One of us with OCD is loving it.  

Bicycle art in the center median of a small town

Tram only no vehicle road, except us.

We plugged our destination back into our GPS and got back on track, but it led us directly into the center of Ghent. Okay, we knew we did not want to drive in old European city centers, but here we were. The streets were extremely narrow and although two-lane, parking is legal on one side so if there is an oncoming car, somebody has to scoot into a space between parked cars to let the other pass. Well, we are an RV and we do NOT scoot into little spaces. It was completely nerve wracking and we could not find a place to park – at least not legally. Jack drove around and around and around, usually on the same streets because most streets are one way or restricted to bicycles or pedestrians only. Finally, Jack said I am just driving where I want (wrong way on one-way streets and down a “no vehicle” road reserved for trams) until he found a spot we could park. It was behind the cathedral in a construction area and totally illegal, but it was neither blocking or bothering no one. I was a wreck.

We searched for the entrance to the church that was under major construction and finally found it. Once inside, the noise and confusion of the city was replaced with a choir singing and the serenity of a church. We were there to see the Adoration of the Lamb – the alterpiece that was the co-star of the Monuments Men (along with the Madonna and Child). We could get very close (protected by glass) and they had audioguides that explained the technical artistry as well as all the religious symbolism and meanings. We were both astounded with the beauty and the meanings of the art, but of course, no photos allowed. Afterward we sat and listened to the choir for a little bit before getting back to the RV, happy to find it had not been towed away and no tickets or police waiting for us.  

Jack managed to get us out of the downtown without any incidents and used the motorway to get to West Flanders. I chose a real, full-service campground that was in the country – just what I wanted after a stressful city day. The campground had that wonderful country fresh scent of cows (you know, THAT smell), green grass and precisely trimmed hedges all around.

Dinner was a prepackaged chicken something that I had picked up in the store. I knew it was chicken and cheese by the french words, poulet and fromage, but everything else, ????? Turned out to be quite good pre-breaded chicken patties with melty cheese inside.

A great day – we loved seeing the altarpiece panels and it was worth the significant additional gray hairs I now have.