There’s that saying, “the little things, they’re not so little.” I was thinking about that as we pedaled our way out of Brugge this morning. Do the little things add up to a big thing, or is there also a big thing of its own? Is this trip a bunch of little things all added together, or that and also a big thing? I thought about that after seeing some cool bird, or bridge, or piece of art as we pedaled along but I can’t say what it was since there are so many of these things every day.

After all, there is the why we are doing this thing, with the what we are doing. All the little things every day that we see and experience that give one or other or both of us joy, or pause, or food for thought. And we are hoping that this will add up in some way to what comes next. Angie and I are talking about a lot about that and the values by which we want to live our lives, and we hope this trip will shake some more stuff out of the trees. But it may not and we may have to just enjoy those moments as they come. And we are. More about the other deep and meaningful stuff at some point.
Today we rode from Bruges (Brugge) to Gent (Ghent), which was about 45km (29 miles) of riding. Although the ride was mostly flat (the only hills were overpasses), we rode into the wind for most of the route, so it was quite a workout. Although it was very pretty, there were very few places to stop along the way. It was good to learn this because it shows that we will be wise to stock up with food for lunch and so on before we leave Ghent for the next couple of legs. In fact the only places we saw to buy something along the way were a strawberry automat (really! Here’s pictures) and a bakery.

The only other place we stopped was when we finally found a bench at the side of the (busy) road where we could stop to eat said fruit and baked goods!
We rolled into Ghent around 2:00pm and checked into our hostel. Yet another utilitarian (aka unattractive) building with spartan furnishings, but it’s a cheap place to sleep! Once again we are on the top floor (58 steps, no elevator) and the wifi doesn’t reach the room.
After cleaning ourselves up and getting organized we set off on foot (it’s not fun to bike on the cobbles and the city isn’t that big) to explore a bit. Brugge has a tremendous charm and some great buildings, but Ghent has TONS of spectacular buildings. One of my favorites so far is the tourist information center, which is in the old fish market.

We also stopped for coffee and Angie’s first Belgian waffle in Belgium at Mokabon, which is one of those places you read about on Trip Advisor etc.
Here are a couple of other cool buildings we saw today. Don’t know about their provenance yet but hope to find out.

We came back to the hostel to take advantage of the wifi (ground floor only which is par for the course) to research dinner, and then took ourselves to De Frietketel which was a fun experience though I don’t need another Bicky Burger, which seems to be a specialty around here. This was the large order of fries:

We walked that off taking the long way back to the hostel. Onward to tomorrow which involves sightseeing around the city, and laundry!