Belgian Road-Trip - Part I

Since today turned out to be Belgium's version of labor day, the brewery that I had wanted to visit (Orval... in Wallonia) was closed. Pretty much anything that required employees was closed. It seemed that the only things still in business were the public transport companies and some restaurants. This made our site-seeing a little more limited.

We started out the day by driving from our neighborhood to Tervuren (where Kristen's fam will be staying). Just wanted to practice getting there from Brussels. Wasn't too difficult... pretty much stay on the same road the whole time. This took all of 20 minutes.

Then we decided to drive to Luxembourg. Don't really know much about this little country. What do they speak there? What does it look like? If we look down at the map while driving, will we miss the entire country?

We drove directly East out of the Brussels/Tervuren area, then through Liege before turning south towards Luxembourg. Really nice drive through the country. The map we had was pretty much only Flemmish Belgium (the upper half), so at one point we were off the map and had to rely on street signs. This can be a bit tricky over here. The border between northern Luxembourg and Belgium must be quite jagged because we kept seeing signs indicating that we were either leaving Belgium and entering Luxembourg or leaving Luxembourd and entering Belgium. This prompted us to make a stop to buy a map at a strange road-side alcohol and tobacco emporium. It was here that we discovered the Luxembourgians speak French, Dutch, and German (big surprise).

Back on the road with a map, we drove down through the middle of Luxembourg passing lots of sloping farmland and field after field covered with bright yellow dandelions. You'd almost think they were a crop, there were so many. Made us wonder what it will be like when they all go to seed... a snow storm?

We stopped for lunch in a little town called Ettelbruck. There must have been some crucial WWII events in this area because there was a "General Patton War Museum" in the town. Most places were closed and the town was almost abondoned, but we found a little out-door cafe that was serving lunch. Both of us had interesting salads. Mine, a manly salad with seared beef on it; and Kristen's with little toast points topped with a blob of broiled goat cheese. Good stuff!

After this, we decided to veer back west into Belgium again, rather than driving down into the "METROPOLIS", Luxembourg City. We considered stopping in either of two breweries that we would drive near or to a castle. The breweries were a bit too far off the highway to commit to when they would most likely not be open. And our directions for the castle were too indescript to make that a reality. So, we decided to head back to Brussels.

After all, there was all this stuff going on to commemorate the expansion of the European Union. We were a bit curious about the festivities. It was about 5:30 when we made it back to Brussels. Unfortunately, all the people who were at "our park" had taken up all of the parking spots within 10 blocks of our apartment. So, we had to park pretty far away.

At this point, we were a bit exhausted. Not sure why. Just felt really beat. But we went out anyway. Walked through the park and saw all of the the people milling about. Then we headed down to the Grand Place where we thought the "samples of food and beer from the new member countries" were supposed to be. All we found there were tourist pamphlets and a concert of musicians from these same new countries. Grabbed a bunch of brochures from places like Latvia, Turkey, Estonia, Malta and Cyprus. Then we walked back to our neighborhood rather than taking the metro. Needed to get our car-seat-flattened butts to re-inflate.

Upon re-entering "our" park, we saw that the food and spirits from the EU countries were here the whole time. We had walked right past them the first time because there were too many people crowding around (we shy away from that kind of stuff). I tried to press my way through to the booths of Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Malta, but it was like being at the front row of a standing-room only Abba concert (i.e.- lots of people who aren't moving out of the way). I'm sure the food and beer on the other side of those people was pretty good though. We'll have to try it by physically going to each country instead.

Oh well... we went home and stayed in for the rest of the evening. And we just brought our car back to our own neighborhood. Tomorrow is another day!

-RP-