A Tsar on a Tow Canal Boat

The barge, or tow canal boat, between Bruges and Ghent has linked the two Flemish cities with each other for a good three hundred years. During all that time, it was not only a popular way for ordinary people to travel, kings and tsars also chose the barge in preference to the stagecoach. Nonetheless, in the nineteenth century, the craze for travelling by tow canal suddenly came to an end.