When you travel, things do not always go according to plan. Sometimes you leave a museum to go back home, and twenty minutes later, you find yourself back at the museum. Sometimes your guidebook tells you to get on a bus going away from your destination. Sometimes the boats stop running at 6:00, even with tons of daylight left. For travel to be a success, you need to roll with these sorts of things and not stress about them. Mer always says that most things are either a good experience or a good story. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. At least as long as the boats are running.

We got launched from our particular berth around 9:30, and we took the tram back out to the train station. From there, we walked into Cidadel Park, which is a park I had seen on my map of Ghent and one that I wanted to see. So that was a happy bonus. We walked through the very pretty park, which had plenty of flowers, some statues, tons of trees, a couple of fountains, and an artificially-augmented hill – the “stones” jutting from the hill were made of concrete. Our ultimate destination was on the far side of the park – the Fine Arts Museum.

We got in for free on our ever-handy three-day Gent City Card (which gives us free transportation as well as various free entries around town). We almost had the museum to ourselves – most rooms either had no one in them or only  one other couple. We walked in to the galleries and were immediately drawn to a large room decorated with wild and fantastical “plants” and “animals.” It was very colorful, and chaotic, but we both liked it. We would have gone there anyway, but what drew us was a small group of musicians and singers practicing modern pieces, which they continued to do the whole time we were in the museum. It lent a mystical quality to the morning.

Meredith loved the layout of the place. There were arrows and numbered rooms that led you through the exhibits. In general, the rooms were laid out chronologically, which is very helpful to people like me, who can see development in art over time if spoon-fed it. Most of the museum’s works were either excellent works by minor artists or lesser-known works of major artists. It did have two very trippy-looking paintings by Bosch, who painted around 1500 but had a style that looked as if it were from the 1930s. Dali could have painted these. It blows my mind every time I see a Bosch painting (or one attributed to him).

There were really good works of religious art, including a small room dedicated to religious modern art. My favorite work in the collection was one where Jesus is being mocked by four guards while two of them pry the crown of thorns down onto the head of Jesus. The are all looking at Jesus and laughing, but Jesus is looking slightly sad and is staring directly out of the frame at us, the viewers. It wasn’t clear if he was looking at us in an accusing way or in an “I’m doing this for you” way, or both. It was quite moving. It was done by the Flemish painter, Jan Janssen, who was heavily influenced by Caravaggio, around 1647.

Many of the rooms mixed old and new, which Meredith pointed out was the same as in the Design Museum yesterday. In a room of paintings from 1500, the museum would show a few modern paintings. In the modern works rooms, they would have objects from 1600. It was a thoughtful way to keep linking the artworks.

We saw the entire museum that was open; several spaces were closed, as the museum was between exhibitions. We got to see two Rodin sculptures, the Bosch paintings, Magritte, Brueghel, Rubens, and other famous artists, as well as many good “unknown masters” and some lesser-known painters. We saw everything in about two and a half hours,

Mer wanted to go back into town for lunch, so we left the museum and walked back through the park. Mer let me scamper up the hilly area, and then back down on the other side. We kept walking past places we recognized, and then slowly we began to realize we had not seen that pond on the way in. Or that busy street. Or that museum up ahead…wait a minute….

We had gone straight when we should have turned right at an intersection, and the walkway had taken us right back to the Fine Arts Museum. So we got to see pretty much all of Cidadel Park. Roll with it. Keep walking and laughing. We got back to the tram station and back into town around 2:00 for a nice lunch in an enclosed courtyard of a small restaurant.

After lunch, we took about a half-hour rest stop at the hotel. Part of traveling at forty-five years old and up is managing backs and knees. Then it was off to a buzzer-beater tour of a small museum on ordinary family life in Belgium over the last one hundred years or so. We got into the museum at almost 4:30, and it closed at 5:00, so we did not read a lot of the placards. The exhibit was quaint, showing various aspects of life as if it were a calendar. There was birth and death, childhood and teen years, marriage and older life. They had artifacts in each room to go along with the theme: the birth years had strollers and such, the teen room had album covers and Walkmans and older video games, and so on. We really liked the school room and the wedding room – both had pictures from across the century, and we got a kick out of guessing the years based on the fashions. We were usually right, but there were some surprises – the 1990 school photo looked to me as if it were from 2000, so I was wrong there.

Back to the hotel to reorganize, and then back out to the main square to catch a bus out to a far-flung site. Our guide book said to take a certain bus, so we jumped on it. Mer asked the driver at the next stop if we were on the right bus. We were not – in fact, we were going the wrong way. Somehow, inexplicably, Rick Steves had let us down. We got back on the other bus going the other way, and got back to the main square, where we waited for another bus that did not come for ten or fifteen minutes, at which point Mer decided to kick over to Plan B – boats.

There are several companies that ply the river by prying money out of your hand, and it looks very pleasant. We walked over to the main bridge to find one boat company closed up. We checked with the second company and their last boat went out at 6:00; it was 6:30. Tomorrow, then. Go with the flow.

Mer had a nearby restaurant picked out, but I did not like the food choices, since they were mostly fish and steaks. That meant the choice fell to me, so we found an Italian place where we could sit outside and Mer could speak Italian to the staff. It was  a good pick. We finished the meal with a waffle from a nearby stand, completing the Belgian trifecta – waffles, chocolate, and fries.

So, it was an unplanned early evening back at the hotel, getting in around 8:00. Mer did some research on the buses for tomorrow, so everything should go according to plan. Unless it doesn’t. Either way, we are on vacation in Belgium with each other. That plan always works.