Laundry in Ghent, Belgium

Rafael was kind enough to pick up some maps from a very cool tourist office so the next day I took a shorter train trip to Ghent, a very hip, very cool little town.

Ghent has the coolest wallpaper store in the world. Wow.

Sadly, it rained all day, I woke up with a sore throat, and it seemed there was immense construction going on,

as a result of some or all of the above, it seemed that just about everything was closed…maybe because it was Monday.

Anyway, I brought my dirty laundry and found a laundrymat, then I explored the Gravensteen castle


which had an excellent torture museum. Waterboarding, old school style

plus a guillateen which was used for numerous executions.

Took a lot of pictures,

walked around in the rain with my laundry,

felt my flu getting worse, had some Belgian Fries and then headed back to Brussels, hoping that I didn’t have swine flu. I didn’t really care if I had it, but I didn’t want to pass it on to Raphael and his daughters.

Ghent also has the coolest ashtray I’ve ever stuck a butt in.

for some interesting Ghent History:
http://www.trabel.com/gent-history.htm