{"id":232,"date":"2008-08-10T07:54:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-10T07:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beltguy.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/10\/hello-from-gent-belgiu\/"},"modified":"2008-08-10T07:54:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-10T07:54:00","slug":"hello-from-gent-belgiu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/?p=232","title":{"rendered":"Hello from Gent, Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_9DHD9pWgKwQ\/SJ6fTCxw8lI\/AAAAAAAAAEc\/tGA0ctnlcIk\/s1600-h\/Hotel+in+Gent.JPG\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_9DHD9pWgKwQ\/SJ6fTCxw8lI\/AAAAAAAAAEc\/tGA0ctnlcIk\/s320\/Hotel+in+Gent.JPG\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232794966563025490\" style=\"cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nOur Hotel in Gent<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nHello from the Novotel Hotel in Gent Belgium.<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nSunday Morning; August 10, 2008   (first travelogue of this trip)<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nJust a bit of background on this trip.  A couple of years ago when we were visiting Bill and Jeanne Birt (Jeanne is Pat&#8217;s cousin) back it Iowa (a favorite place for us to visit) we started talking about Europe and their desire to travel there.  Since then we have been planning this trip.  Of course, the timing is not good with the dollar vs Euro, but we decided to go anyway.   <\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nWe met up in Dallas and flew to Paris.  That is a 9.5 hour flight.  From there, we took the train to Gent, transferring in Brussels from the high speed train to a commuter train.  We arrived at the hotel at 4:00 PM in the afternoon.<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nOur hotel is right in the middle of historic Gent, Belgium&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/place\/51%C2%B003%2709.3%22N+3%C2%B043%2715.1%22E\/@51.05258,3.720855,456m\/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0\">(here)<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/?near=51.05258,3.720855\"><\/a>.  After we arrived in Gent, we met with Jos, a fellow that I used to work with when I made many trips to Belgium for Gates.  I had contacted Jos when we knew that we were coming to Belgium since he has lived here all of his life and is a great \u201ctour guide\u201d.   <\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nJos gave us a great walking tour of Gent, and we ended up at favorite restaurant of his that only serves spareribs.  The restaurant, Amadeus, is located in an historic old building.   <\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nI will write more about Gent later, but it has a lot of history and many of the buildings date back to the 1200s.   <\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nWe seem to have adjusted to the time change (\u201cjet lag\u201d).  We forced ourselves to stay up until it was time to go to bed according to the local time.   <\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\nThats all for now.<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our Hotel in Gent Hello from the Novotel Hotel in Gent Belgium. Sunday Morning; August 10, 2008 (first travelogue of this trip) Just a bit of background on this trip. A couple of years ago when we were visiting Bill &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/?p=232\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}