Medieval window, Ghent Belltower, Belgium

A rather small old colored window with small frames and warped panes, from back when glass was much more precious than it is today.

Steep medieval stairs, Ghent Belltower, Belgium

Claustrophobically narrow, steep, and uneven stairs mark the age of this old tower.

 

Decommissioned bells, Ghent Belltower, Belgium

Some of the smaller old bells from the tower have been kept around after decommissioning.

Tower watchmen, Ghent Belltower, Belgium

Down in the base of the tower, statues of watchmen stand guard in all four directions.

Friendly dragon sign, Ghent Belltower, Belgium

The mascot of the belfry, a friendly smoking dragon, welcomes us to a tour.  Its original forms, one of which still tops the tower, are rather more aggressive in nature.

Ghent Belltower, Belgium

In the old city center of Ghent, the medieval belfry looks over the squares. Unlike most such towers, however, this bell-tower became essentially secular over time, being used more as a watchtower and civic alarm system.

De Mammelokker, Ghent, Belgium

This frieze above an old city jail shows a most puckish civic sense of humor: it shows an ancient legend about a prisoner sentenced to starve to death, who survived thanks to his daughter nursing him on her visits.  Its name is De Mammelokker ("the breast sucker"), and I can only imagine what an odd experience it must have been to walk beneath it as either jailer or prisoner.

Miniature cathedral roof door, Ghent, Belgium

Atop a cathedral in central Ghent, a tiny little door, probably less than a meter tall.

Bendy pipe, Ghent city hall, Belgium

Up the side of the city hall, this candy-striped drainpipe bends to conform to centuries of layered architectural revisions.

Slanty City Hall, Ghent, Belgium

The city hall in Ghent is an oddly shaped building, tall and shallow but broad, and seeming to slant a little bit backwards with its curious asymmetric roof.

Peeing children, Lene, Nestor, Luna, Ghent, Belgium

Brussels may be famous for its little peeing boy, but Ghent has a mixed-gender group of three. The two flanking girls were added only in 2014, I would guess in some skewed sense of fairness. They do not yet pee, which may be a good thing given that the girls' trajectory doesn't look like it would quite work right.

Neptune, Ghent, Belgium

Neptune raises his gleaming trident high in this port city.

Gravensteen, Ghent, Belgium

In central Ghent stands Gravensteen, a true old castle dating back to the 12th century.

Goblin child, Ghent, Belgium

A smiling goblin child rides her bike toward the sidewalk passerby, sporting a mischievous smile.

Suck My Moby Dick, Ghent, Belgium

No comment needed. I love it.

Crazy eagle, Ghent, Belgium

A rather dark and unflattering view of the United States on this garage in Ghent. I particularly appreciate the plucked out feathers and the lurking crows.

Eyebeams in oil, Ghent, Belgium

I don't know whether this oil painting shooting white eye-beams is one graffiti or two, but in either case I dig it.

Trade, Ghent, Belgium

This quite complex and inscrutable diagram is apparently for the study trade, or perhaps more colloquially "business."

Machining and Metalworking, Ghent, Belgium

Another old departmental panel, a little bit less obvious, for machining and metalworking.

Chemistry, Ghent, Belgium

Along a university wall, diagrammatic panels declare various departments in Dutch. Some are pretty easy to guess, like this for chemistry.

Golden spiral, Ghent, Belgium

I don't know what this long golden metal spiral between houses is, but I suspect it is a brass connected that is keeping these two houses for slumping inward or outward.

de Jean, Ghent, Belgium

An understated sign in the middle of a house's brick wall, apparently proclaiming the family name of a current or former inhabitant.

Protruding windows, Ghent, Belgium

Another modern apartment building, providing its tenants with protruding rectangular boxed windows.

Red and white apartments, Ghent, Belgium

More modern apartment buildings in rippling polygonal red and white waves.

Fancy canal ship, Ghent, Belgium

While the boats in the edge-of-city canals are more pragmatic speedboat runabouts, the few in the center of the city seem to be more fancy pleasure craft, like this ship with its figurehead woman in a bright red dress.

Canalside buildings, Ghent, Belgium

As in many old European towns, thin pointy stone and brick buildings cram together, in this case by the side of a canal.

Canals, Ghent, Belgium

Wide reflecting beauty of a Ghent canal, from amidst a spanning bridge.

Canalside street, Ghent, Belgium

Canals thread through the center of Ghent, no longer so relevant to commerce, but still a focus of beauty and pleasure for the city.

Ghent streets, Belgium

Bicycling down the streets of Ghent.

Canal parking, Ghent, Belgium

In other parts of the canal network, closer to the city, we find instead a raft of pleasure boats drawn up and parked along the sides of the canals.

Rural watertower, Ghent, Belgium

Conical concrete watertower sticking up above a village hidden in the trees near the canal to the South of Ghent.

Passing peloton, Ghent, Belgium

Several times, tightly packed pelotons of training cyclist zipped past me as I sat beside the canal, working on a manuscript.

Canal locks, Ghent, Belgium

Continuing South into the countryside, smaller locks lead out into a beautiful wooded passage for a canal with bicycle paths on either side.

Lock control stairs, Ghent, Belgium

Closeup on the extremely worn-looking circular stair towers going up into the lock controls.

Large scale locks, Ghent, Belgium

Mighty locks sit beneath these towers, drawing their gates up an down and surveying traffic in both directions along the Ringvaart (Ring Canal).

Canal barge, Ghent, Belgium

The canals to the South of Ghent are not peaceful backwaters or quaint tourist attractions, but serious working water roads. As I bicycled beside them, a massive barge passed every few minutes, wide, flat, and heavily laden with things like cars, gravel, and various other commercial goods. For scale, notice the pilot's car sitting just behind the large Belgian flag at the back of the barge.

The Ghent Buffalos and the Inappropriate Logo

Southeastern Ghent also houses a massive stadium, where the Ghent Buffalos play. They came by this logo by an odd set of circumstances a century ago, but apparently it is only recently that people have started to realize that there might be some problematic racism and appropriation involved in their "Buffalo Ben" and "Squaw Mel" mascots.

YouTube Flat Earth, Ghent, Belgium

I wish I knew how much this graffiti was intended as a joke versus serious. I particularly like the little person falling off the bottom of the Earth, but not the sides.

Curving building reflection, Ghent, Belgium

Interesting reflections off of a curving office building in the Southeastern industrial district of Ghent.

Chemical stack, Ghent, Belgium

A towering stack of structures on the roof of this already-quite-tall chemical plant. I don't know just what processes or pollution controls are going on here, but whatever it may be, it requires a skyscraper worth of equipment to implement.

Chemical plant roof, Ghent, Belgium

The Southeastern edge of Ghent is a heavily industrial district, with whopping big chemical plants next to a network of canals carrying heavy traffic.

Road bridge, Ghent, Belgium

On the South side of Ghent, a modern suspension bridge crosses a canal before the setting sun.

Narrow sidewalk, Ghent, Belgium

Lovely narrow sidewalk with the rail line on one side and a long line of comfortable old trees on the other.

Bicycle parking, Ghent, Belgium

One of the things I always love about the Low Countries is their loving embrace of bicycles, leading to wonderful streets to ride and jammed parking scenes like this one. On this trip, due to an accident of booking, I ended up with a hotel on the other side of the city from the meeting that I was attending, the silver lining of which was that I got to ride a bicycle through the streets of Ghent each day.

Ghent rail station, Belgium

Underneath the raised tracks of the railway station in Ghent, a long skylight with artfully place panes of colored glass.

Soccer fan, Belgium airport

This man is clearly a serious fan of football. I'd like to know if the lines on his head are marker or tattoo, but wouldn't dare to ask.

Green bottles, Chicago O'Hare Airport

Green light shining through bottles above the same winebar. No idea if anything they serve is good, but I like their decor style.

Wineglass chandelier, Chicago O'Hare Airport

Chandelier of wineglasses above, what else, a winebar. I love the glasses, though.

Underground walkway rainbows, Chicago O'Hare Airport

Close to the wall, a more muted viewpoint, bringing out the jutting white lights while the rainbow panels remain in a more concealed position.

Underground walkway rainbows, Chicago O'Hare Airport

Closeup of some of the rainbow edges of the underground walkway.