Ghent Light Festival

Ghent Light Festival

or

*A Literally Brilliant Time* 
(*see end of blog)

Way back in September last year, in the far distant days when the alarm clock was set on Monday evening and de-activated on Friday morning, after sounding its final reveille of the week, Judith mentioned to John that the lovely city of Ghent holds a triennial Light Festival, and that the next staging of the event would be January 2015.

We Googled, liked what we saw, and booked an apartment the very same evening.  Judith also booked her accommodation, and the scene was set for an adventure.

John and I travelled on Wednesday (28th January). We pushed the boat out (or rather, pushed the train out) and travelled from Norwich to London first class.

I was amused by the sign on the inside of the toilet lid.

It's amazing that the journey from Norwich to London takes the same amount of time as that from London to Brussels.

On arrival in Ghent, we had intended to use a tram to get to the apartment. We knew we needed Tram 1, and that the direction was towards the city centre, but we couldn't see a tram with that written on it. As we are both cowards when it comes to communicating in foreign languages, we decided to take a taxi instead.  The taxi should have cost 10 Euros, but unfortunately there seemed to be gridlock in the centre of the city, and I sat, watching the meter ticking, ticking, ticking.... we finally arrived at our street and 20 euros later we unlocked the door to the apartment.

http://www.drabstraat2.be/en

They had very kindly left a selection of Belgian beers in the fridge.

Our apartment is on the 1st floor, above a chocolatiere and a stained glass studio/gallery.

It was dark when we arrived, and in the morning, when I opened the bedroom curtains, I was somewhat surprised at the view from the window.

After another Googling session, the mystery was solved. Our apartment was next door to the Ghent Design Museum.  Our view was good, but I also like this aerial view.

                                           

We decided to spend Thursday in Bruges, which is about an hour away, by train. DOUBLE DECKER TRAIN!!!!!

Bruges is lovely. Very cold in January, but lovely. It's a centre for lace-making, and embroidery. These window displays are fab. I would love a pair of these scissors.

They also like their beer, and to be fair, so do we.

 And their chocolate...

And their horse & carriages...

And fabulous buildings...

I hope this isn't sharing too much information, but it illustrates a point...   I needed to visit "de kleine meisjes kamer" (Dutch for little girls room)  Having handed over my 50c I was entertained by Brotherhood of Man's Save Your Kisses For Me.

They do like their EuroPop.  We had lunch, and a couple of beers, in this lovely pub, where they had the same radio station playing. Definitely NOT John's ideal music choice.

We returned to Ghent by mid afternoon, as this was the first night of the Light Festival, and we were meeting Judith for a meal first.

We had a fantastic "eat all you can" type vegetarian buffet at http://www.komkommertijd.be/

One of the dishes (my favourite) looked and tasted like stuffing with tiny Brussel sprouts in.

On to the whole reason for being here. http://www.lichtfestivalgent.be/en/lfg-2015/

We were all quite tired this evening. John and I had spent the day walking round Bruges, and Judith had travelled from Norwich, so we only looked at a small number of lights. I didn't take many photos, but we loved these giant illuminated bunnies.

On Friday morning, we decided to have a wander round Ghent.

In the main shopping street, they have a     C & A. I couldn't resist popping in for a quick look.

Lunch back at the apartment, and a lazy afternoon in preparation for tonight's light shows.

I love this one, in a shop window.

This was projected on to a house.

And this one projected on to a college wall.

We ended up, back with the giant bunnies!

Saturday. We had planned to catch the train to Antwerp, but decided it would be too tiring, and we needed to conserve our energy for the evening's entertainment.  We met Judith for another wander round the city, and enjoyed a boat trip.

The Gravensteen










The old & the new:

I love the tree house painted on the side of the flats.

Dinner was a veggie burger at http://www.happycow.net/reviews/tasty-world-ghent-18249 followed by a two hour walk round the light festival. I say walk, more like a slow shuffle. So many people!

This was one of my favourites. A huge "mobile" suspended from a crane, over the canal.

And a cloud made from light bulbs, which you can pull cords to turn parts of it on and off. 

Sunday morning, and it's pouring with rain. We had arranged to meet Judith for a jaunt around the Sunday Markets. We decided to go ahead with this plan, despite the weather.  The Flea Market had quite a few stalls, but the Book Market consisted of one stall, which the owner was hastily packing back into his car, while his wife held an umbrella over him. Judith had heard about an indoor Antiques Market, so we headed off to find it. Amazing place. We were particularly taken with a table football game, complete with ashtrays attached to each corner. We also saw a couple of chairs, which would have looked lovely in our new library (that's a future blog) Unfortunately, they were suede, so John wouldn't have been able to sit in them. We bought a present for Jeremie, but can't say what because it's not his birthday until March.

The Flower Market had two marquees, so we wandered inside, just to get out of the rain. The Beesten Market is where Ghentonians go to buy pets. Today, there was just one van. But what a van!!!

Interestingly, the Beesten Market is where the giant inflatable rabbits are to be found each evening for the duration of the light festival. Talking of which, tonight is the final night.

Before setting off for another shuffle round the festival route, we had a wonderful meal at  http://www.eetkaffee-multatuli.be/en  I'm not in the habit of taking pictures of my food, but the grilled aubergine was splendid.

Unfortunately, I have no photos of the final night's festival. I took quite a lot of videos, but for some reason, I can't upload them to the blog. We spent a long time at just one display, which was a video of a whale projected on to water spray on the river. You had to be there really, but we all agreed that it was "bloody marvellous"  Watch it on this YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEZs5cmt7SI



So, Monday, time to go home. A word of advice here. Always check your train ticket to make sure you know which station you need to get off at. We happily watched people getting off at Brussels - Midi, then travelled on to Brussels - Central, only to discover that Eurostar leaves from Midi.  Luckily, we had plenty of time, so we caught the next train back. The rest of the journey was uneventful, apart from the train stopping for 25 minutes at Calais, to wait for an ambulance. A passenger had become ill. I've never heard the question "Is there a doctor or nurse on the train" before. I don't know any details, but I hope they were ok.

We had a fantastic time, I think we might return in January 2018.


*
 Thanks to my good friend Karan for her unintentional pun, which I have shamelessly stolen

London Adventure

A couple of weeks ago, I sent off an application to appear on a TV quiz show. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I’m not really sure why I did it, but anyway, last Tuesday afternoon I had a phone call from a lady called Shelley, who works for the TV company.  We chatted for a while, and then she said she’d like to ask me 10 general knowledge questions. The first one was a celebrity one, and I don’t do celebrities, but as luck would have it, I’d seen a headline referring to this, so that was ok. I knew the next few and was starting to relax. Now, I should mention at this point, that I hadn’t told John that I’d sent the application. He arrived home from work while I was answering the questions.  I can’t imagine what he was thinking when he walked into the room, to find me shushing him, and saying “cherries” to the phone. To be fair, cherries was the answer to the question “what is Kirsch made from?”

After I’d answered all the questions, Shelley invited me to attend an audition, I arranged the date for the following week. Of course, I then had to explain to John what was going on.

The day of the audition arrived.  I caught the train to London at 12:00, much too early as the audition wasn't until 1645, but this was my first trip to London on my own, and I was worried I would get lost on the underground. As it turned out, the underground is really simple, as long has you have step by step instructions written out. So I arrived at Liverpool Street at 14:00 with hours to kill.  The audition was in West Kensington. I decided to get off the tube at Knightsbridge and go for a wander. I walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, stopping off to admire the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall.

I still had time to spare, and realised that I was close to the roof garden on top of what used to be a department store, but is now an office block. I’d visited this about 15 years ago, when we took Pat to London as a birthday treat. Back then it was quite shabby looking, but now it’s all very posh. You can hire it for weddings etc. I think I preferred it how it used to be.

I took a few photos, and the wonderful, if sometimes scary (it seems to know too much about me) Google+ has organised them into a storybook for me. Here’s a link.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111260554016079527666/stories/af69f396-7da0-3df3-96e0-b785cccceed5147aa3e23e4

Back to the main purpose of this Blog - the audition. I decided that as the weather was going to be very warm, and I would be wandering around for hours beforehand, I should take a change of clothes, and some travel wipes and deodorant. Sorry if this too much information, just skip to the next paragraph if you’re squeamish.  After leaving the roof garden, I decided to finish the tube journey, then find a cafe, have a cuppa and use the facilities for a quick tidy up.  I thought West Kensington sounded delightful; Kensington Gardens were lovely, Kensington High Street was full of upmarket shops. West Kensington turned out to be the poor relation in the Kensington clan. There was a rough looking pub, a tattoo parlour, several boarded up properties and a taxi office. Then I spotted a reasonable looking cafe on a corner, I crossed the road, approached the door, and read the sign - CLOSED. By now, it was 4:15. I had to be at the audition address by 4:45. The only option left for a quick ablute was the pub. I walked in, located the Ladies and entered, the smallest cubicle in the world…. Five minutes later, I emerged, refreshed, clean top, make-up redone, ready to take on Tipping Point.

I arrived at the address with several other people, all clutching printouts of our emailed directions. We signed in, and waited in a canteen (closed, so no chance of a cuppa) A couple of young men issued us with name badges, and took photos of us. We were then taken into a small room, with chairs lining the walls. Seventeen would-be contestants, starting to feel nervous. We were all issued with a clipboard, pen and a sheet of paper printed with numbers 1 to 25, to record our answers to 25 general knowledge questions. Although we weren’t told the answers afterwards, I know that I got at least 21 right. I can’t remember all of them, but they included:

What is the Patella more commonly known as

What colour coats to Chelsea Pensioners wear

What signalling system uses flags

Which monarch gave the first televised Christmas message

Under which US President did Al Gore serve as Vice-President

After the clipboards were collected, we were told that we would now have to stand up (one at a time) and talk for 2 minutes, to camera.  Surprisingly, some of the people were horrified by this. I’m not sure why, because the successful ones will be standing up and speaking in front of a  studio audience, not to mention the millions watching on the telly. Anyway, I was 6th to go. A couple of people had “name-dropped”, one woman saying that she works at a shooting club, where celebrities and royals go. So when it was my turn I trumped them with “I’m related to Columbo” and Eric Morecambe saying “Hello” to me and Wendy Baker on the steps of the Luton Town Junior Supporters Club.  I also related tales of falling asleep on the back of the motorbike.  I managed to talk for my allotted 2 minutes. Some people struggled to keep going, so I hope that I did quite well. It was all over in an hour. We’ve been told that if we haven’t heard anything by the end of November, assume that we were unsuccessful. Some people may get an email by the end of the week to say they’ve been shortlisted.

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