The Last Leg

With just a week to go before Christmas, it's time to start heading towards the ferry at Cherbourg. We start with an easy 3-hour run from Germany to Belgium, including a quick stop for lunch in the Netherlands (which means it totally counts as another country visited on this trip!).

We arrive in Gent and check in with plenty of time to hit the city centre for an afternoon stroll. Gent is well-known as a beautiful city, and one of the great things about it is the very large car-free zone in the centre of the city. We spend a couple of hours wandering through the markets and looking at the many churches, towers and other stunning architecture.

This being Belgium, the majority of the market attendees are drinking beer rather than mulled wine, and we happily join in, enjoying a few local "blondes" as well as some "trippels". As it's pretty cold we also warm up with some tartiflette, a dish from the French Alps made of potato, reblochon cheese and bacon, before we find a nice local bar and a restaurant for dinner.

Overall we're very happy with our half day in Gent, and only wish we had more time to visit other parts of the city. It's definitely up near the top of the list of places that we will come back to again!

Leaving Gent on Tuesday morning, we have a fairly long drive ahead out of Belgium and back into rainy France. We're headed to the town of Honfleur, just past Le Havre, where we'll spend the last night of the trip on land. The weather is bad but fortunately we're staying right in the town centre, so we manage to make it to the port area and into a couple of bars between showers. We are treating ourselves to a nicer dinner than usual to celebrate the trip, and thoroughly enjoy our evening at L'Absinthe restaurant.

Next morning we walk back to the port for a brief look at the Christmas market (which just opened) and a few photos in daylight, although unfortunately we get caught in a heavy shower.

After that it's a fairly short drive (just over two hours) to Cherbourg, but our ferry isn't until 20:30, which leaves us plenty of time to find a creperie for lunch. We've toured the WW2 sites in Normandy fairly extensively over the years, but with time to spare we make a brief side trip to Pointe du Hoc for a cold and breezy walk around what remains of the gun battery.

Then it's a run around a hypermarket to stock up on wine and French snacks, before heading to the ferry terminal. The forecast for the crossing is "rough" but we're hopeful that we'll arrive home on time tomorrow!