A Walk through Gent and my new favorite antique shop

Ok, week two is still in the archives, waiting to be posted, but I thought I'd share some pictures from the other day as we walked around town, stopping every hour or so to have a coffee (more caffeine) at outdoor cafes which are everywhere.

A medieval canal runs through the oldest part of Gent, which made it a seaport.  Here are a few pictures along the canal

...sigh...I would love to jump in this boat!

 A wonderful weeping willow next to an outdoor cafe.

Window boxes are everywhere. I could do ten blog posts

just on them....hmm...lol

This shop window caught my eye right away, with all gorgeous wool roving.

The ancient cathedral towering above the city...

and the pagan Greenman who guards the entrance to the crypt, the oldest part of the cathedral.

There are medieval towers just about everywhere you look.

A little outdoor market with fresh herbs...

This was a tiny medieval door I was DYING to open....

And now, my new discovery, only blocks from my house.......!

where on my first visit, I bought a sweet little old watercolor box from Paris

and then.........on our second visit, we bought this "thing" that we thought would be perfect for my studio upstairs.  After we got it home, we realized what a monster it was.  It has 40 drawers which are beyond perfect for someone who LOVES drawers and organizing things IN drawers.....

There is NO way we can get it up the stairs, so Plan B is somehow getting it up to the second floor outside from the back garden.  This means shoving it up a ladder with ropes (I think..lol) and having someone on the second floor roof...a couple "someones" I think, who will then grab it and hoist it through a HUGE window that goes into the studio.  That's the plan anyway.... If there's any way, I'll try to take pictures of this.....it ought to be interesting.

We have four little adorable kitties here, so I'll end this blog with a few pics of the kittens.

My first week in Belgium!

Last week we did a day trip to the North Sea at a sea shore in France.  Along the way, I saw my first REAL (and very old) windmill...it was amazing!  And how convenient was it that there were flower beds full of tulips close to it?!

We continued on to the seashore, to a spot where you could look across the English Channel and see the white cliffs of Dover.  It was a little hazy and my pictures didn't show the cliffs but here's a few of the beach where we had a picnic and a snooze in the sun.

We stopped for coffee (as usual) on the way back in a little village in France and I snapped a few shots of the red clay tile rooftops.  I'm so inspired here and I think photography, combined with some sort of mixed media artwork could be in the future...lol..

Not that my photography is anything to get excited about (yet, anyway...lol) but I can picture using these rooftops somehow...

I also got to see an amazing art exhibition of a Belgian symbolist painter, Gustave van de Woestyne at the art museum here in Gent.  This was one of my favorite paintings...

and I managed to get myself in trouble there, as well... So typical for me...lol.  Apparently I got "TOO CLOSE!" to one of the paintings and a little twerp who worked for the museum freaked out and came over and lectured me in Dutch.  When he finished his big warning, I told him I didn't understand a word he said.  I DID get a little satisfaction out of that! LOL..  Actually, all I had done was point at something in a painting, but apparently he thought my finger was a combo finger/switchblade or something.........sigh..... lol

Another day, we took a walk through the city and I saw this huge cat looking out an even "huger" window of the second story, watching all the activity below. 

A few last pics of an ancient abbey very close to here, in ruins now, but absolutely wonderful!

Stay tuned for Week Two, which included a trip to the Netherlands AND a fabulous antique shop I found!