![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/ghent-bridge.jpg\")
<\/a>First there are the people. As my favorite author Henry James would have put it, \u201cthe note\u201d of the city is friendliness. I got that vibe everywhere, whether in sandwich or coffee shops, stores, restaurants, and even from strangers who helped me when I got slightly lost. Some of them walked a short distance with me to make sure I was headed in the right direction.<\/p>\nBikes are king in Ghent, or so they say, and it apparently has the largest bike-friendly zone in Europe. Ghent was the first city to designate a street as a \u201ccycle street\u201d\u2014meaning that cars have to stay behind bikes. They\u2019re everywhere, weaving through traffic and around the trams which snake along the sinuous streets which seem unlike any other street plan I\u2019m familiar with from my previous years of visiting Western. There was something very calming about riding a tram or just watching one.<\/p>\n Before I got there, I had plans to set a novel elsewhere in Flanders, but after this past week, the novel-in-progress has moved to Ghent.\u00a0 Frankly, I wish I could, too.\u00a0 For awhile, anyway….<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lev Raphael is the author of the memoir\/travelogue <\/em>My Germany<\/a> and 24 other books in many genres. He speaks French, German, and some Dutch.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The psychologist Otto Rank wrote that artists are perpetually in conflict with life.\u00a0 They need seclusion to produce their work, but they also need to go out into the world for stimulation to create their art. Whatever takes me away from home, I’m always receptive to possible locations for stories, essays, and books–and I return … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[347],"tags":[497,827,823,182,828,826,830,821,822,824,825,165,19,341,829,380,750],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-authors","tag-belgian-cuisine","tag-belgium","tag-blogs","tag-bruges","tag-dining","tag-essays","tag-europe","tag-flanders","tag-ghent","tag-hotels","tag-inspiration","tag-novels","tag-travel","tag-travel-writing","tag-writers","tag-writing-novels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2875,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions\/2875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>As a writer, I seek comfort and quiet when I travel and the Carlton Hotel Gent<\/a> was the epitome of those things. Family owned, boutique-style, it was smoothly run, ultra-quiet, close to the train station, served delicious breakfasts, and the owners were perfect guides to the city and its restaurants. The hip Caf\u00e9 Parti<\/a> was nearby and if could\u2019ve eaten every lunch and dinner there, I would have. It served Belgian specialties that I\u2019d sampled before in Brussels and Bruges, but they were exceptional, especially the stoofvlees<\/em>, a beef stew made with dark beer, and the onglet<\/em>, hanger steak better than any I\u2019d had in the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/a>I liked the modern lines of the hotel and the Caf\u00e9 Parti (above) because Ghent has so much history in its architecture, from the Renaissance buildings along the canals, to the Romanesque St. Bavo Cathedral<\/a> and the medieval Gravensteen fortress<\/a> at the city center. Dipping in and out of these different periods was intensely enjoyable. And so was sampling my favorite Belgian chocolate, Neuhaus, and a Ghent specialty, neuzekes<\/em><\/a>, candies filled with raspberry syrup that look like little pointed hats and are partly made with gum Arabic. They\u2019re sensational.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>For a city which is the third largest port in Belgium, and has 250,000 residents, Ghent never felt overwhelming. It welcomed and fascinated me, and unlike the more famous Bruges half an hour away (which has twice as many tourists), it didn’t feel like a museum despite the amazing architecture from so many different periods.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n