dear all,
there a couple of days all compacted into this blog because internet access was a little dodgy and expensive in ghent, but brugges is free!hooray.
dad had the day off work on thursday, so we went to gravensteen castle, also called the house of counts..it once housed the counts of ghent..kinda of obvious. parts of the castle are from 1180, but bits and pieces have been built randomly over time. there were a few creepy dungeons, towers and torture rooms..including thumb screws and a guillotine with the original blade on it..no blood though. woke thurday morning and bec got excited cz there was snow..we all looked but it was only sleet. then an hour later on the castle roof the snow came...huge big white flakes fell for 40 minutes, it was really pretty and now weve had a real european winter holiday!
we spent the afternoon wandering the city, shopping had lunch and then bought some more chocolates. Rested for a little while and then went off to see some museums. one night a year all of the museums in ghent are totally free. so from 6pm to 10pm-ish we visited 3 museums. firstly went to the design museum and wandered round the funky chairs and gold plated saucepans.
the next museum was the..actually dont know what the translation name would be..but it was full of old stuff..lol, like most museums are!but it had everyday old stuff, old clothes, games, kitchen stuff, shop stuff and sporting equip. all the explanations were in dutch so we couldnt work out somethings. there was also an exhibition including a huge collection of home videos people have donated to the museum taken from the 30's up till the 80's.even though it was just everyday stuff, births, weddings and school it was a glimpse into how life used to be like.
the last museum..by now we were getting hungry and couldnt find food anywhere..was a textile museum. the normal museum was shut and only the exhibition on lingerie was open..me, mum and bec wandered around looking at how uncomfortable the underwear looked..couldnt find dan..and then he came back with a grin on his face..he had found the lingerie model with the biggest boobs ever..couldnt find dad for a while either..he swears he didnt see them though???
finally finished thurday with noodles and beer.
today we left ghent, were all getting pretty good at packing stuff up and leaving quickly..that is once we have all woken up and gotten out of bed.
train was only 30 minutes to brugges. once here we caught the bus and dumped our stuff at the hostel and wandered into town, its only a 10 minute walk and there are christmas lights and stalls up everywhere, its really pretty and were going out again tonight to see it all lit up.
we climbed the bell tower in brugges (the one from the movie "in brugges", bec says someone falls off the top of the tower, but there was wire up everywhere..movie magic i suppose)the walk was ok, not too many stairs. from there we had chips and mayo for lunch and looked around the town. we wanted to ride a boat on the canals, but they werent running, i think they shut for winter.
but because it was winter there was..and outdoor iceskating rink!hooray!!!the ice rink was set up witha xmas tree in the middle, and one end had a small shed attached with plastic windows (this info will be important later on in the story).first, me, dan and bec went on and skated a few laps without anyone falling over..and then dad came on..still noone fell over..and then...mum came on. she went really well and was skating like a real pro, she was even handing out hints on how to stop..i think she should have tried her own advice...she came flying towards me and bec and crashed into the barrier so hard, her body waist above bent over the railing and her face smacked into the plastic window so hard that she bounced back and flung back towards the ice, grabbing the barrier on the way back down so she didnt fall on the ice. it was sooo funny, me and bec were laughing sooo hard, and we looked across and the 30 or so people around the edges were also laughing. it will go down as the best iceskating crash ever.
just resting at the hostel at the moment, were about to go for dinner and a beer and a walk around town.
hope all is well, were all well (mum has a sore face from hitting the window) but apart from that not too cold and still all smiling.
love jess and mandy xo
p.s. there are new photos up
