We’ve been camping in the city of Ghent for 4 days and quite frankly, we love it. When we started preparing for our trip to Belgium, it would seem obvious that we would go to Brussels, right. But we heard wonderful things from people in the Netherlands about the city of Ghent and decided to do the reverse – stay in Ghent (less tourist) and day trip it to Brussels, which is exactly what we did.
Now that we’ve overdosed on chocolate and mussels it was time to check out this amazingly relaxed city, where people (Gentenaars) are very laid back and extremely helpful we should add (we got lost several times). The only thing I knew about Ghent was 2 things; 1) the Count’s Castle is there and 2) Cuberdon Candy!
So what’s a cuberdon?! They are these lovely raspberry purple candy shaped like cones that are heavenly. 🙂 A parent at one of the playgrounds in Rotterdam shared some with the kids one day and told us a story of the only 2 food carts in the city that sold them and how the competition was so fierce they eventually got into a physical fight and the mayor of the city ban them from selling cuberdons for a month. She didn’t know if they were still there, so we decided if we ever went to Ghent, we’d go look for them.
As we searched for the food carts in the city we passed several shops that served cuberdon flavored ice cream and even sandwich spread and was almost tempted to buy some. Finally, we found both food carts and chose the one with the smallest line. (We were tempted to ask the guy “how’s your neighbor?”, but then chickened out!)
The kids were so excited, they loved this candy the first time they ate it. They kept asking me to find it in the Netherlands, but there’s was none to be found.
To me, it tastes like the “violet” candy we had as kids (those small square purple ones) but in the shape of a cone with the texture of a very large jelly bean. Oh, so good!
Lou Lou had 3, Jaf 2, Dad 3 and Mom 2!
They taste so much better fresh, I’m glad we hunted them down.