Back to Belgium, we spent our Easter weekend in Ghent, including a nice Sunday brunch with our son and his Belgian friend, whom we met here to catch up. The city is full of fascinating historic buildings and huge churches everywhere.
This site, which sits between two branches of the river Lys, was first fortified around 1000, initially in wood and later in stone. It was soon transformed into a motte-and-bailey castle. The current castle dates from 1180. Until 1353, the Gravensteen was the residence of the Counts of Flanders.
The Easter weekend at Ghent was very busy, it seems 2 years of low tourism are finally over. We had come to the centre at odd times and couldn’t see any of the churches from inside, not everybody was sad about that, but we clearly will have to come again outside of the holidays and with more time!
As our plan is to go to Normandy, we will just do one more stop on the way, before we can start to explore the D-Day beaches. More on our next post!