Ghent by night
Apr. 14th, 2017 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustRoger found information about a walking route to explore the illumination of the city, and he was keen to try it out. The sun was low when we set out in search of dinner, but nowhere near set, and I was happy just to enjoy the evening light on the Belfry, and on St Nicholas', and on the view back to the three towers from St Michael's Bridge...
We ate at Balls & Glory, which does what it says on the tin: they serve meatballs. Giant meatballs, admittedly - imagine a Scotch egg in which the egg has been replaced by some kind of sauce - but meatballs, and nothing but. Well, OK, there's a choice of four balls, two pork, one chicken and one veg - and since Thursday is officially vegetarian day in Ghent I should probably have gone with that, but it was aubergine and tomato, and you never know with aubergine... Where was I? Balls & Glory wasn't our first choice, but it was fine, and cheerful: you choose your ball and whether you want it with stoemp (which is mash, and traditional) or salad, or bread and a little salad. There's beer or lemonade to drink, and wine as well if you want. There's one long table down the middle of the room, and little tables for two (or four if they squeeze up), and there's a carafe of water on your table and a bowl of apples for dessert, and we sat back and watched the Deliverooo drivers coming in to collect their orders.
By now it was dark, which was fine, that was the plan. I wasn't keen to do any more walking than we needed, but we did need to walk back to the hotel - and as soon as we set off, we found ourselves on a swing bridge, looking back to St Michael's Bridge:
and what we should have done, obviously, was head for those lights (maybe we will - we still have one night left); instead we followed the original plan, and saw a couple of public buildings lit up, which weren't very exciting. What would have been exciting would have been if those birds in my picture had been illuminated as they were supposed to be, and for a while this made us wonder if we had misunderstood and the circuit was not in fact illuminated at the moment. But we asked at the Tourist Office this morning, and the lady said it's all working, and she would report the problem with the birds.
For a catalogue of 'we didn't really get we'd we'd been wanting from the evening', we had a surprisingly good time anyway. There's probably an uplifting moral in that.
We ate at Balls & Glory, which does what it says on the tin: they serve meatballs. Giant meatballs, admittedly - imagine a Scotch egg in which the egg has been replaced by some kind of sauce - but meatballs, and nothing but. Well, OK, there's a choice of four balls, two pork, one chicken and one veg - and since Thursday is officially vegetarian day in Ghent I should probably have gone with that, but it was aubergine and tomato, and you never know with aubergine... Where was I? Balls & Glory wasn't our first choice, but it was fine, and cheerful: you choose your ball and whether you want it with stoemp (which is mash, and traditional) or salad, or bread and a little salad. There's beer or lemonade to drink, and wine as well if you want. There's one long table down the middle of the room, and little tables for two (or four if they squeeze up), and there's a carafe of water on your table and a bowl of apples for dessert, and we sat back and watched the Deliverooo drivers coming in to collect their orders.
By now it was dark, which was fine, that was the plan. I wasn't keen to do any more walking than we needed, but we did need to walk back to the hotel - and as soon as we set off, we found ourselves on a swing bridge, looking back to St Michael's Bridge:
and what we should have done, obviously, was head for those lights (maybe we will - we still have one night left); instead we followed the original plan, and saw a couple of public buildings lit up, which weren't very exciting. What would have been exciting would have been if those birds in my picture had been illuminated as they were supposed to be, and for a while this made us wonder if we had misunderstood and the circuit was not in fact illuminated at the moment. But we asked at the Tourist Office this morning, and the lady said it's all working, and she would report the problem with the birds.
For a catalogue of 'we didn't really get we'd we'd been wanting from the evening', we had a surprisingly good time anyway. There's probably an uplifting moral in that.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-15 03:11 am (UTC)That sounds delightful, if slightly distressingly named.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-15 02:49 pm (UTC)I know. I'd like to blame the difficulty of getting register and nuance right in a foreign language, but I suspect they did it on purpose!