For me its half way through day 6 but I couldnt find an internet cafe yesterday - just like I cant find the apostrophe on this keyboard. Talking of which these keyboards are not QWERTY keyboards they are AZERTY keyboards; and its not just the AZQ&W that have been swapped to get the @ symbol you have to hit Ctrl Alt and 2 - it took me ages to work that out.
Before my ride yesterday I thought I would visit Gents main 2 tourist attractions. The first is '(found it) The adoration of the mystic lamb' being from Wales this sounded interesting. It is, however, a famous Medieval oil painting in the cathedral, unfortunately it was being restored but you could pay 5 Euros to see a replica - I don' think so. The other was to climb the 253 steps of the Belfry which is on the Cloth Hall. This was ticked off the list. Gent is a pretty city but is like a construction site at the moment due to installation of Tram Lines and more and more of the dreaded 'Pavé'. It seems like all the towns in Flanders are covered with the stuff. It may look pretty but a nightmare to cycle on. Anyhow I wandered back to the Hotel passed those ladies - don't they ever get to go to bed - packed me stuff and headed off at about 11am
The weather was great 22C bright with a few clouds and a good old westerly - absolutly perfect. For the first 15k I sailed along the paths were good and I was going about 30k for alot of it. However for the rest of the day until the last 15k the paths were pretty awful. There are 3 types of path; tamac when besides the road is normally good; then there is concrete slabs, about 12 foot long with an inch gap to the next one and always at a different height - just like a train ride on a bad track; and the last type of main path is the red block paving which can be ok but today was awful, uneven, bits missing etc I spent most of the time just looking at the groung just in front of me. Still it wasn't too long a ride and I arrived in Leuven at 6pm.
For lunch today I stopped in a retaurant had a lovely pasta meal and thought I would treat myself to a pancake, but the waitress said
'we dont serve pancakes until 2pm' the time was 1:30. I looked at her in amazement what kind of place would serve you dinner and then tell you to wait another half an hour for desert.
'you can have ice cream'
'i dont want icecream i want a pancake with jam'
At 1:40 she said 'you can have your pancake now'
And mighty fine it was too! Customer service or what!
Leuven is absolutey lovely - like all Flanders towns it has a magnicent Cloth Hall - the Cloth industry was what made Flanders rich hunderds of years ago. But what is more beauutiful than the city & the beer is the girlies. Leuven has 25000 students and i'm sure all the pretty girls were out last night - shame they were all half my age.
Thanks for all your comments please keep them coming, I can view them on my phone but I cant write the blog on it as memory on my phone is not big enough - or something like that
Today's stats
Distance 94.39k
Climb 321m
Riding time 4:15:36
Average speed 22.1kph
Total time 6:31
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That was a ploy from the waitress, she knows that Pancakes aren't listed in "Brendan's Good Cycling Food" guide, come to think of it you seem to be having lots of fun on this trip, yet when you are with me you never let us even stop for a cuppa!
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