"Wait, where is this bus going?"

I'll start the blog post where we started our day - on the train. Today the Reeds, Lo, and I headed about an hour away from Leuven to visit Ghent. From our extremely cursory research, it seemed that Ghent was famous, touristically at least, for a church, a castle, pretty canals, and a cone-shaped raspberry jelly-filled snack. We had loose plans to experience 4 of 4.

But first, the train. Between playing my new game Fluxx, old games like BS and gin rummy, and electronic devices, we were quite entertained. And though we tried to be appropriately hushed in the proper European train manner, at one point we looked up and realized that we were the only ones left in the whole car. We told ourselves that this was simply because all the commuters had disembarked in Brussels. Then we told ourselves that again for extra reinforcement.


We even broke out snacks on the train. Anna volunteered to try the vegetable leather my mom sent along with me. It wasn't (too) bad.
Once we hopped off in Ghent we realized it was quite a walk to the center of town. It was a pleasant enough, but nonetheless we made plans to figure out how to take public transit back later that day. We lunched and headed for the castle, but on the way we stopped to try the special raspberry Ghent "noses". (that's what the guy who sold them to us called them.) Loretta didn't like them so much. Neither did most of our group, though Wes, Kate, and I gamely ate two.

Kate and I stopped to pose for pictures at the canal, and I was trying to get the perfect shot with just her and the peaceful background. I didn't succeed, but I kind of like this picture better anyway:
As castles go, it was remarkably well-reconstructed, if a bit short on informational history signs along the way. Instead, it had a rather dark emphasis on the history of torture in the castle. Kate and Bora took a moment to ponder this:

In keeping with the torture theme, we soon found a model guillotine, complete with original blade, and Anna of course pretended to be its victim. (Note sticking out tongue).

We finished the castle tour with a stroll around the ramparts, watched some Belgian school children dressed like knights on a field trip, and headed out to sit by the sunny canal and have some chocolate.


While sitting, we saw boats loading up for tours, and on a whim decided to hop in. The price was good, the scenery was great.

Also, the guide's voice and the thrumming engine were peaceful and relaxing enough that Bora and I both did this for at least a little while:


Since we'd added in the boat tour, we had to skip the church in order to hop a tram for the train station and make it to our 2:24 pm train back to Leuven. That all went without a hitch, and in an hour, we were right back at the Leuven bus station where we'd started. We rushed over the number 8 bus which we knew would take us back to the Hansens'.

But it was strange. At first things seemed familiar, then they didn't so much. Then they REALLY didn't, but we kept hoping that the bus was just taking a slightly different route to the stop we were expecting. Then I saw the road sign with "Leuven" and a red slash through the name, meaning we were officially out of town. A kind young woman in front of us couldn't help but overhear our increasingly confused conversation about where we might be and where we'd end up, and so we told her and asked for help. She made an "oh dear, you're wanting to be where?" face, and told us we needed to just hop off, wait by the other side of the road for the next bus, and ride all they way back to the station and start again. Mind you, we were in a very rural-feeling village by now, so we sheepishly (ha!) thanked her and hopped off. Bora called JJ to let her know we'd be very late, everyone tried to look on the bright side (it's beautiful out here! what a nice ride we had!), and I took a picture of the group:

Yep, those are fields out there behind us.

Finally we made our way back, Bora and I stopped off for a nice visit at the hospital with Bruce, and Lo made her enchiladas, and all was well. We've learned from our mistake, and next time we promise to listen to what JJ told us and wait at the correct platform, no matter how much of a rush we're in.