Ghent

[ewx]

We had a day trip to Ghent. Where Brussels has St Michael, Ghent prefers dragons. This is the Belfort, topped by one:

Inside, an earlier model:

Bell with N for scale:

The carillon can be driven from a keyboard or a drum:

Practice keyboard for the carillon (notice the small bells inside):

Ghent has bendy busses and trams (we used the latter):

Sint-Niklaaskerk:

More Ghent.

Design museum. The basement was very chair-themed:

Some of the display cases had these little figures in:

Chair by Allesandro Mendini. Opposite the chair was a video of the creator sitting in it, apparently on a roof, explaining his thoughts.

More design museum.

We visited the Gravensteen, literally “castle of the count”.

View south from Gravensteen. Neptune stands over the entrance to the fish market.

By the river. I’ve no idea.

More castle.

(“Ghent” is the English spelling; in Flemish it’s spelled “Gent”, and in French “Gand”).

All holiday articles:

1. Brussels
2. Ghent
3. Bruges
4. Food

Comments

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Ghent we didn't get to back in the day (we did do a day-trip to Bruges.) I wonder if English put the 'h' in 'Ghent' to make it clear it's a hard-g and/or distinguish it from gent(leman). Oh, and I love Naath's rainbow top :-)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but I think a more likely explanation is that it was formerly pronounced in English the same way as it is in Flemish, i.e. with an initial /ɣ/ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_velar_fricative), and that when that sound was lost from English, the spelling in English didn’t change to match.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Ah that does sound likely, thank you for the information!