Gent – no it’s not Bruges

◄ Atlas & Zanzibar Bookshop – Come to Gent and speak for the Atlas & Zanzibar Bookshop Frank van Os suggested. Quite why Gent would have the best travel bookshop in Belgium I have no idea, but it looked like an interesting town so I didn’t need much persuading.  My talk was a conversation with Bent van Looy, who is clearly very popular in Belgium. He has a band – Das Pop – plus he’s an artist, writer (books on Paris, he lived there 2006 to 2016, and Amsterdam), in fact a real multi-dimensional man. He’s also a nice guy! We have a big audience – a couple of hundred? – and Bent is a sympathetic interviewer, good questions, but lets me talk. Which I do.

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It’s all in English, the audience is enthusiastic and it continues afterwards with a very long line for book signatures, almost all of them in well-worn books, always a good sign when it comes to travel books.

▲ Basilique National du Sacre Coeur a Koekelberg, Brussel – although, after I arrived in Brussels, I’d be on one train after another, I arrived in Belgium from Barcelona in Spain by air, by Ryanair in fact. I always like it when you spot things from the air which you can later identify and a little Googling revealed on the final approach into Brussels I’d flown over the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. It’s the biggest church in Belgium and the 5th biggest in the world. Although construction started in 1905, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Belgian independence, two World Wars interrupted things and it wasn’t completed until 1970.

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I’d started the morning at breakfast time in Barcelona by indulging in an old-man-old-person, fall except I claim innocence. Somebody had left a pat of butter on the floor which I put my heel on and went down in a slide, fortunately (as I always say) not bashing my head on the bench, the floor or anything else and remarkably not smashing the glass in my hand although the juice (it was full) went everywhere. After which I race back to my room to talk travel writing via Zoom to a female empowerment workshop hosted at Kasaka River Lodge, on the Lower Zambezi in Zambia. Then I head out to the airport.

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◄ Tony in the Atlas & Zanzibar Bookshop – what a nice bookshop!

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▲ Korenlei (Wheat or Corn Quay), Leie River – it’s one of the iconic views of the historic town centre of Gent. Bruges gets so much touristic attention it mildly annoys the citizens of Gent. After all Gent is just as historic, just as beautiful, has a rather larger population and since it’s also a university town ‘we’re younger and busier, Gent is much more active at night.’

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◄ Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, Gent Altarpiece, St Bavo’s Cathedral – the cathedral is huge, grand and was built from 1274, although its final appearance is much more recent. I descended into the vaults for a very interesting virtual reality exposition on the story of the Van Eyck Lamb of God altarpiece, also known as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. Quite apart from its artistic significance, one of the most important paintings in the world citizens of Gent insist, its remarkable story of survival really intrigues me. Started by Hubert van Eyck it was finished by his brother Jan van Eyck in 1423 and then has come through every threat possible:

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• Avoided destruction by the Iconoclasts in 1566

• Carted off by the French and displayed in the Louvre, returned after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo

• Bought and sold, ended up in Berlin in 1821

• Returned as reparations after WW I

• Two panels stolen in 1934, one never recovered

• Carted off by the Germans during WW II and ended up in the Austrian salt mines where it was saved by the Monument Men – George Clooney did the saving in the movie

• Major restoration commenced in 2012 and is ongoing

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In the MSK (Museum of Fine Arts or Museum voor Schone Kunsten) we’re shown the ongoing work on the altarpiece by Hélène Dubois who heads up the team of seven restorers working on the meticulous restoration. The lower panels were completed in 2012 to 2016, the upper panels will be finished by 2026. The project is 80% paid for by government departments, the balance by private organisations, Getty is funding photographic recording and interpretation.

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▲ Gravensteen – the Castle of the Count is a very impressive, very imposing and very solid fort, good to paddle past on the Gent river.

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▲  Old Fish Market – I’m staying in the Comic Art Hotel, not far from the Castle of the Count and Old Fish Market. The recently opened  hotel is owned by somebody who is clearly a European comic art enthusiast, in my room I’ve got Western cowboys, but by a Belgian artist and they’re speaking French. I’d quite have liked Tarzan.

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◄  Gent at night – the city may look good in daytime, but it’s wonderful at night. My Gent wandering, by day and night, includes a canal boat tour and a look around the SMAK, Municipal Museum of Modern Art, adjacent to the MSK Museum

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◄ Publiek Restaurant – Frank from the Atlas & Zanzibar bookshop and people from the Gent tourist department take me to this Michelin-starred restaurant with a celebrity chef and a five course set meal (six for me if I count that I had the rhubarb dessert and then joined the others in a local specialty, a dame blanche). The Gent tourist people are all very enthusiastic (still!) about Lonely Planet’s 2011 Best in Travel feature on Gent. I also had an excellent lunch in the MSK Fine Art Musem’s restaurant where I enjoyed Gentse waterzooi, a particular Gent version of the iconic soup featuring chicken instead of the more expensive fish.

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◄  Sint Pieters Railway Station – arriving in Belgium it took just half an hour from my arrival gate at Brussels Airport to my train departure from the Zaventem Airport Station, which remarkably I managed to catch despite having to wrestle with a Flemish-only ticketing machine. It must have an English language option, even French would be better, but I could not find it. The Sint Pieters Railway Station was my final sight of Gent, from there I took a train back to Brussels and another on to Valence in the south of France.