After breakfast we moved our van out of the Urban Gardens campsite to a free parking area and caught a bus into the middle of Ghent.

The buildings all looked incredibly old and beautiful- it was a bit like being in a Disneyland city. 

The city has experienced a lot of upheaval with Franks and Vikings, then later Spain, Austria, and France. Finally, after Waterloo, Ghent and Flanders became a part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This period lasted 15 years until the Belgian Revolution in 1830.

Ghent has been a very large port due to the big river Lys connecting it to the sea – and still is.

We used my walking tour app to do a quick whizz around the city. 

First was St Nicholas’ church started in the 13th century.

We then saw many other buildings from 11th- 13th century.

We checked out St Bavois Cathedral from the 13th century.

St James Church had the scallop shell outside related to the Camino since he is buried at Santiago de Compostela.

We saw a few more interesting places.

The river Lys was very beautiful with many tourist boats and decorative buildings.We saw one being renovated which was just a shell.

It was starting to get hot so we caught the bus back to the van and drove west not knowing how far we would get. 

After around 200 km we decided to stop at an aire in Wiltz in Luxembourg. 

On the way we found many plaques about this being where the Battle of the Bulge was fought in WWII. With the allies making good headway across Europe after D-Day, the Germans made a last ditch effort trying to split the Americans and the British. Wiltz was cut off and had to hold the ground to stop Bastogne to be taken which was the German objective. US troops were recuperating from injuries and sickness and had to fight including musicians and cooks.

 The countryside was quite lovely.

We continued to Wiltz and found the 3 spots allocated to the aire were occupied. The campsite at the end was closed and we ended up at the dead end with caravan and cars following us in and it causing a traffic jam. It took half an hour until we could maneuver out again. 

We stopped in the car parks next to the aire spots along with 2 other vans-  as I had read many others had done previously. We had a quiet night with only dog walkers and kids on e-bikes passing by.