Monday, September 16, 2013 @ 4:48 PM in 2013 Europe
Day 82
I wanted to see a different city today and Ghent was on my list before I left the States. It's a 30 minute train ride from Bruges and the trains run very regularly. I went to the train station today to pick up my tickets to Amsterdam and buy a round trip to Ghent.
The lady at the ticket counter couldn't figure out what to do with my confirmation code which was pretty frustrating. To make it even more frustrating, I couldn't pull up the email with the information since there was no wifi available at the train station. I said screw it and figured I'd get it all taken care of later.
I jumped on a train to Ghent and watched the countryside pass by through the window. When I got to Ghent I jumped on a tram that took me to the city center. Ghent is a lot bigger than Bruges and has more of a "real city" feel. The old city center area was nice but I felt like half the place was under construction. A lot of the statues and buildings were surrounded by scaffolding and tarps so they could do whatever maintenance they needed to.
I walked around for a few hours and took some photos. There was some free wifi outside a McDonalds so I took a screenshot of my Amsterdam train ticket email and figured I'd try my luck getting the ticket printed at the Ghent train station.
Rather than hang out in Ghent all day aimlessly wandering around, I jumped on the tram back to the train station and successfully printed my ticket to Amsterdam. There was a train leaving back to Bruges a few minutes later so I got on it.
Back at the hostel I did some research into hotels in Paris. The hostel is getting pretty packed earlier than normal. A lot of English people just checked in and they're all hanging out drinking. After this blog post I'll probably get some dinner going and then have a drink at the hostel bar.
The first stage of my trip to Amsterdam leaves at 9:18 tomorrow morning so I won't stay up too late tonight.
Teaser photos:
Tags: daily journal, belgium, bruges, gent
Posted from: Belgium