Visiting Ghent, Belgium - Gravensteen Castle & Canal Boat Tour | Eurotunnel Road Trip With Kids - Day 3

I'd been so excited for our family road trip with Eurotunnel for so many reasons, but mostly because I was just so eager to go and visit some places in the world that I'd never been before with my family. Day one and two in Boulonge-ser-mer and in Lille in France had been so much fun - we'd just loved exploring and discovering places that were new to us. I was so excited to be going to spend the day in Ghent in Belgium on day three. My in-laws had visited before and had told us how much they loved it, especially the castle, describing it as a 'real fairytale type of castle'. And so being so into historic places myself, I couldn't wait to go and visit.

The car journey from Lille to Ghent took us just an hour. Which I found to be incredibly quick, especially because we'd driven between countries! Our first stop was of course to the castle and we had managed to find parking easily enough really close by and so we were only a few minutes walk away. Gravensteen Castle, standing proudly in the centre of Ghent, was just as incredible as I had expected it to be. There's just something magical and exciting about castles and I really felt such an interesting, historic atmosphere whilst at Graventsteen. 

It was so much fun taking the boys, Ethan 4 and Logan nearly 2, around the castle. Ethan's at an age where he's really starting to take an interest in different things and he made his Daddy incredibly happy when he decided he wanted to be a knight and live in a castle carrying around a sword and shield.

 And it was even better when they ran into an actual real life knight of the castle! (Look at how happy Adam is!) ;) 

The castle doesn't have wheelchair or pushchair access because there's a lot of steps, but we were shown where we could leave our pushchair and Logan, our youngest, did so well walking around the castle with Daddy carrying him up and down the steps.

The views from the top of Gravensteen castle were incredible. I'm not one for heights, despite my love for castles, but I even had a sneak peek and as you can see below, from the top we had the most stunning views over Ghent's beautiful quaint buildings and canals. 

Somebody kindly offered to take a photo of us all which was very kind of them. :)

The boys found themselves a throne to sit on and felt like real life Prince's! 

And they spent ages just running about together in the castle court yard at the end - they were having so much fun that they didn't want to leave. Ghent castle was such a lovely place to go as a family, I'm so pleased that we got to visit, the ticket prices were so reasonable (just 10 euros each for Adam and I and free for the boys), and so I'd really recommended a visit if you are ever anywhere near. 

After we finished playing knights at the castle and Adam had spent most of our euros in the gift shop, ;) we found ourselves an outdoor table at a restaurant just over the road called 'Tparadijs and we ordered ourselves a brie sandwich which turned out to be so much more than we were expecting, it was incredible and so delicious! We sat there for a while in the sunshine eating our lunch, looking up at the castle, with Ethan playing with his new knight model's from the castle gift shop and Logan just chilling in his pushchair eating his lunch. It was just one of those really lovely, everything is perfect right now moments. 

Shorty after we'd finished our lunch, we took a stroll further along to the canals. Everywhere we turned was pretty and we decided that we were going to take a boat tour to be able to see a bit more of Ghent's beauty. 

Our canal boat tour tickets were inexpensive for all of us and our tour guide was really good. In fact, everybody on the boat was really friendly and we got chatting to a lovely American family who were sat next to us, who even very kindly, shared some of the biscuits they had for their own children with our boys.

I just had to share the above photo because it makes me laugh so much - it was lovely and hot in Ghent on the day we visited and so we were carrying around water bottles with us all day. Logan decided that his Daddy needed to remember to keep hydrated and so he opened up his Daddy's mouth with his hand and shoved the whole top of the water bottle in! It was so funny!

Whilst in Ghent, we saw lots of lovely bars and restaurants with so many offering fantastic options for vegetarians too. After we'd had our dinner (and ice cream of course!), we went for a last little stroll ahead of bedtime. The sun was just going down and the light was beautiful.

That night we stayed in the Marriott hotel right in the centre of Ghent, which was really convenient for us. The Marriott Ghent is a really modern hotel, that is bright and clean and whilst we were there, the staff made us feel incredibly welcome. They also offer underground parking, which costs extra, but made it easier for us in terms of bringing our suitcases in and taking them back out again. We really enjoyed our stay and our breakfast in the morning. We saw a lot of business-type people at the hotel, but we also found it to be incredibly family-friendly and very accommodating towards everyone.

Ghent is such a romantic city, but it is also somewhere where you can bring your children and have a really wonderful time. I loved the atmosphere in Ghent, it felt calm and slower paced and was the perfect place to spend our time ahead of what was going to be a busy day in Efteling theme park in The Netherlands on day 4 (our last day) of our road trip.

Part 4, our final day in Efteling theme park in The Netherlands, plus the second part to our video, will be coming very soon!

 Read our other posts from our road trip 

• Part one: Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.
• Part two: Lille, France.
• You can also now watch the first part of our video from our trip over on my YouTube channel.

*Thank you to Eurotunnel for partnering with our family for this trip. 

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