Погода: Гент, сентябрь

September is quieter than July but the crowd here is not a seasonal thing so much as a daily one. Coach groups come through from the Zeebrugge cruise berths, weekends bring Belgians in to shop, and a national monuments weekend in the middle of the month adds locals to the visitors. What regulars keep coming back to is the evening: the day trippers leave, the buildings are lit, and the centre becomes a different town to walk. So the advice is to stay the night rather than to pick a week. Our row gives 19.9C days over 14.1C nights and 64.4mm across 10.3 days. The record: humidity 76 percent, 9.3 hours of sun, a 21.7 kph wind and AQI 44.

Forum posters describe February in Belgium as similar to November - cold, wet and often bleak - though one visitor's specific trip reported it wasn't too cold and had no rain, just persistently gray skies without a single sunny stretch. Posters generally flag February as probably the single most likely month for snow, if any falls at all, in a typical Belgian winter. Posters comparing Ghent and Bruges as winter bases describe Ghent as more of a living, working city than the more overtly tourist-oriented Bruges, a distinction that shapes atmosphere more than weather. Posters generally rate February as cold, damp and gray for Ghent, workable with warm layers and the expectation that sunny days will be the exception rather than the rule.

Forum regulars call Belgian August weather genuinely hard to predict - it might hit 30C, or it might be 15C and raining, and posters are clear that rain poses a bigger risk to a trip than heat does. Early August gets a specific recommendation: many shops and restaurants close in late July, so the first couple weeks of August are quieter and pleasant, landing about two weeks after the huge, crowded Gentse Feesten festival (the third week of July). Crowds and tourism generally thin out as the month goes on, so late August offers a second, different kind of quiet window.