Exploring Ghent: Visiting the
Spiritual Homeland of Flemish Belgium with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
The
suburbs and most of the countryside around Brussels, Belgium are Flemish while
downtown Brussels is French.
Belgium
is a bilingual country: Flemish is a
variant of Dutch spoken in the suburbs and countryside while French is mostly
spoken in Brussels and in Wallonia in southern Belgium, a coal mining area.
On
one of my trips to Belgium, my buddy Eileen and I went to the spiritual capital
of Flemish Belgium in the town of Ghent.
Like
Brouges (Belgium), Ghent has many old brick buildings, pretty canals, lace
shops, and churches that would be major attractions in smaller towns.
We
ate at a restaurant that also served as a bakery and served as a kosher food
products store called Bloch on Veldstraat.
The waitress, who spoke English, told us that the restaurant has been
there for almost 100 years.
We
ordered Shepherd’s Pie. It was made with
a browned crust of mashed potatoes and savory beef and onion filling.
We
visited St. Baaf’s Cathedral downtown and admired the Mystic Lamb Altarpiece by
Jan van Eyck. Flanders is Catholic like
French Belgium and has much artwork to admire in its churches.
The
English guide to the Cathedral is enthusiastically translated as follows:
“Thank
the Lord for the profusion of beauty in your life” and I did just that as we
headed back to Brussels on the train.
(In
2018, I still want Google to develop Google Art Project to make museum
collections overseas and in the US available to Americans, who may not have the
money or physical ability to visit these collections.)
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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