A Break in Ghent

Sunday 1st to Thursday 5th July 2007

At fairly short notice we managed to book ourselves a Ghent city centre B & B for four nights to celebrate Tina’s 60th. There is no point trying to look long term with anything because of the vagaries of my condition and my responses to treatment, but I wanted to make sure Tina’s special day did not pass by unnoticed. Ghent is like Bruges without the “chocolate box” prettiness or image, but it is full of wonderful old Flemish style buildings. It has an industrial past and a much more lived-in feel.

We have a superb B & B on one of the ancient streets with the Stadhuis at one end. We are walking distance from everything, but the rain contrives to limit our wanderings somewhat. It is torrential at times, forcing us to spend a lot of time in bars and restaurants! We have some excellent meals in extremely trendy restaurants and sample the wonderful Belgian beers. I find the days a bit tiring, so we found ourselves back in our room late afternoon for me to have a couple of hours lie down. Also I find that I have started getting mouth ulcers, which detracts from my enjoyment of the lovely food. After four and a half years, I guess the effectiveness of my prophelactic medication is wearing a bit thin. Of course I didn’t bring any Adcortyl or similar, so I have to grin and bear it.

Unfortunately, Tina loses her camera on our second night out and it also transpires that my camera has a fault. So we end up with only a few photographs to remind ourselves of the trip. The good news is that after reporting the loss to the Ghent police, two weeks later it arrives in the post! The honest Belgians show us the way!!

Of course I have to keep the Campath injections going, but without a blood test until Friday, I have no idea whether my bloods are up or down, so I also inject with GCSF to be on the safe side. We are back home Thursday via a big shopping session in Calais and a ferry bursting with noisy school kids.