Ghent; Friday, 20 December, 2013

Despite the train from work grinding to a halt outside London Bridge for 10 minutes I made it to St Pancras with plenty of time, so I had a quick cup of coffee before it was time to check in to the Eurostar and make my way through the shambles that was security – long queues, nobody quite knowing where to go and lines merging with each other. The advantage of the chaos was that by the time I had cleared security there was only a short wait until the train was called.

Just over two hours later we pulled into Brussels and I made the treck across the station to the platform for the train to Ghent, which, just as it was due, did the usual Belgium trick of getting a creeping delay of a few minutes that would go forward another minute every couple of minutes, so by the time it finally pulled into the station what had been “on time” two minutes before it was due was ten minutes late.

Pulling into the building site that is Gent-Sint-Pieters station half an hour later I was unaware that the local tram and bus drivers had just downed tachographs and taken wild-cat strike action, so I happily wandered over, purchased a ticket and waited in the freezing wind on the tram platform with a number of other commuters for the best part of 30 minutes before it became clear that there weren’t going to be any trams.

I managed to warm back up by making the 25 minute, and very dull, trudge into the city centre dragging my, thankfully relatively light, luggage behind me.

Having checked in I headed back out for a quick wander around the centre of town, taking a few photos, before grabbing a bite to eat in one of the stalls of the Christmas market and then heading back to the hotel for a drink before turning in for the night.