BELGIUMMonday the 20th of July
After a small sleep in we got up and went for our first run in 2 weeks. It was nice to get out and about, but we chose the wrong route, and it was a rather boring run. Once we got back we got ourselves ready for the day, then did a few things to Sven like empty out our waste water, fill up our fresh water and get our chemical toilet water levels sorted. Once we were all done we drove from Cambrai, France to Hoegaarden, Belgium. This was only about 150km, but the first time we had crossed a countries border while on the continent. We were not sure what to expect, but were disappointed when we saw a sign and nothing more – definitely no checkpoint or passport stamps here!
We arrived to Hoegaarden early afternoon. We found the information centre and then decided to get some lunch. After a drive around the town to find somewhere nice to have lunch we ended up outside the information centre, made our rolls and went into the lovely Hoegaarden gardens and ate our rolls in there.
The reason we came to Hoegaarden was because I like Hoegaarden beer, and I wanted to see the town, and do a tour of the brewery. We discovered it is pronounced 'hoo-garden'.
Anyway, in the gardens we found a nice place to eat our rolls, and also a nice part of the gardens with fruit trees including cherries, red, black, & white currants, apples and pears. These were planted around a nice vegetable garden. We tried most of them, before heading back to the bar at the gardens to have a drink. Em stuck with a soft drink as she was driving, and I tried Hoegaarden citroen which was very refreshing. We decided we would go to Leuven, a town near Hoegaarden, to find a campsite. For those beer drinkers, this is the home of Stella Artois and the brewery is the biggest brewery I have seen, much bigger than the Guinness brewery. Unfortunately this was a mistake as there were not any camp grounds around, and it took us a long time to get through the town. Eventually we found a campground 20km from Leuven. At the first one we drove into, the caravans we covered in moss, it was surrounded by trees and very shady, and did not look very welcoming (quite creepy in fact!) so we decided to try another ground. We went to another one but it turned out you were supposed to be a member of the Royal Camping Club to use the it. We smiled at them a lot, and as we were only staying for one night they were happy to have us. After being shown to our uneven and sloping campsite, separate from all the 'club members', we left to find food. Belgium is well known for seafood, in addition to beer, frites (French fries), chocolate and waffles. In particular they have the trademark dish of a pot of mussels and a plate of frites. The guy at the camping club gave us directions and we found a great place in a small town called Huldenberg, after a lovely drive through the countryside. We found a fantastic pub that had mussels on the menu and we were sold! After having the young waiter translate entertainingly from the menu for us we choose mussels in a creamy garlic sauce (his translation of garlic: 'ummm, how you say, your mouth with be smelling not so nice after'). Em tasted the Kreik (cherry) beer, which was strongly cherry flavoured – nice, but not sure a whole glass would be good.
A couple of interesting points about Belgium: It is a bilingual country, they speak French in the Southern part and Flemish in the northern part. Flemish from what we can understand is very similar to Dutch. Anyway, in addition to these two languages which I am sure every Belgian knows, the majority of them also speak English which makes things easier for us.
After ordering our mussels and getting our drinks, we sat outside in the sun. Our mussels arrived soon after this and they were fantastic. Tender, sweet, and full of flavour. It was great. We ordered only one pot, but that was enough for us two. After an enjoyable evening out we returned to our campsite to try and get the most level part of the site, and set up for the night.
Tuesday 21st July
After managing to get a reasonable sleep we were up a little later than expected, and we were soon on the road to get back to Hoegaarden. Our GPS took us through a couple of country roads, one of which was near a small village, Blanden. The roads were long and straight and right through the middle of a beautiful Beech forest. Em and I stopped off for photos because it was so nice. I said to Em that maybe they were a remnant of the war. I wasn't sure if I was right or not, but as we drove a bit further we saw bunkers / trenches in the ground, and after talking to a local later that day who confirmed that this was a 'hotspot' during WWII. These were some of the trenches from the battles around this area in WWII. The creepy thing is you could just imagine the two sides coming together in the forest, and battling.
We made it to Hoegaarden without incident and went to what we thought was the Hoegaarden factory. Luckily a couple of truck drivers were outside and kindly told us it was the distribution centre, so we were happily directed to the brewery. However they were sure it would be closed as it is usually closed Mondays and Tuesdays! We decided to go for a look anyway, and were delighted we did! We were in luck. We met a waiter from the restaurant there, who informed us that the restaurant was open because today was Belgium's Independence Day, a national holiday, so they were open for lunch! We were given tickets and instructions, and went on the tour of the factory. It was an interactive tour, showing the history of the local brewing industry, how the beer is made, and a few other details. It was good fun. Em and I were the only ones there, so we had the whole place to ourselves. After we were done we were entitled to a free beer, and we also received a free gift. The gift was a 250mL Hoegaarden beer glass which I was thrilled about. I had a normal 'Witbier' Hoegaarden, and Em had a Hoegaarden Rose, which has raspberries in it. After enjoying these I wanted to go and have a look at the shop. I saw what I was after, enormous Hoegaarden beer glasses, and much to Em's horror, I bought two of them. After this we decided we would head to Brussels. As it was their Independence day we had been warned that the city would be crazy, with roads closed for parades and carnivals. Well we choose a campground on our GPS and decided to go for it. As we got closer we had to divert past multiple closed roads, and go down tiny cobbled streets in the heavy traffic, but were excited to see that our campground would be city centre! When we came around the corner after eventually getting to it we found that it was a camping shop! Thanks very much to the GPS for that significant error. We chose another campground and headed for that. When we finally arrived we set up our site, ate lunch, and decided to go into the city. We didn't end up leaving the campground until 4pm, and after catching the bus and tram into the city centre it was after 5pm before we got there, but there were only a few sites we wanted to check out, so we powered around the streets of Brussels.
We firstly went to the Grande Place, a large cobbled square surrounded by the gothic Hotel de Ville, and the guild halls. It was very impressive. After spending time looking around the square we strolled through the warren of narrow lanes and roads which surround the Grande Place. We went to the Galleries St Hubert (Europe's first shopping 'mall'), where there were some amazing chocolateries. We decided we were allowed a small treat, two chocolates each from one of the best ones, so we went inside and after careful consideration made our choices – the sales lady was very patient with us. We chose a raspberry ganach, a coffee crème covered in white chocolate, a hazelnut praline, and a hazelnut crème. We were not disappointed, they were fantastic. From there we had dinner, again we chose the national dish, so we had mussels in Brussels :-) After dinner we went on a mission and successfully found the Mannekin Pis, a fountain statue of a small boy going to the toilet basically. It seems a little odd, but is world famous, and was fun to track down. He was quite cute, and drew a big crowd.
That finished our late afternoon and evening of exploring Brussels which seemed enough really. We did not have anything that we wanted to see specifically and what we did see did not leave us wanting to see more. So once we were done we managed to successfully catch the tram and then walk back to our campsite without any problems ready to hit the sack.
Wednesday 22nd July
We were up early and on the road just after 8am. We drove west to a small town called Ieper, to explore the town and surrounding area which was a hotly contested region during WWI. We arrived just after 10am to Ieper and were greeted by a magnificent Menin Poort (the Menin Gate), a large monument which has some of the 55000 names of Commonwealth soldiers who lost their lives in WWI in this area and were not found or identified. We drove into the town centre and found ourselves surrounded by fantastic old looking buildings which had a lot of character. They are old looking because they were reduced to rubble during WWI but were rebuilt to near original plan and appearance. After finding out some information we wandered around the town, and looked around Menin Poort. Once we were finished in town we ate our lunch and headed Northeast to Flander's Field to Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world, with nearly 12,000 soldiers, named and mostly unnamed, laid to rest. We looked through the visitor centre there before wandering around the cemetery. The centre was extremely saddening – the statistics and conditions of this battlefield were atrocious. The entire area was mud, and the men starved and froze to death. It was a nice cemetery and had a nice atmosphere, with lots of flower beds planted along the headstones. Hard to imagine the horrors of WWI in the sunshine there today.
We left the Tyne Cot cemetery and drove further north east to Brugge, a city that is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Along the way our GPS took us a few country roads which was fun, and we saw lots of market gardens, and some sort of jet fighter plane flew extremely low over us. It was great! We arrived in Brugge and went straight for our selected campground, through lovely tree-lined streets. When we arrived, which was around 4pm we found a sign outside saying no vacancies. We decided to try our luck and it paid off. To date the camping in Belgium has been average to be complimentary, especially after experiencing France which is camper friendly. In France, their carparks have parks designated for Campervans, and in all of their petrol stations they have places to empty waste water and fill up your water. Anyway this campground was much nicer than the Belgian average, although a little cramped. We were happy to have a spot and decided we should make the most of it and stay for 2 nights. We spent our afternoon shopping. Em was very keen to get some new clothes and was successful. After this we went and picked up some groceries for dinner and a few other stocks.
After getting back to the van we had dinner (no mussels tonight unfortunately, although Em made a good satay) and then got into a few jobs like uploading photos to the computer from the cameras. That rounded off our day.
July 23rd
We woke to hear rain on our roof. We decided we would go for a run anyway, and managed to avoid the heavy rain. After we got back it started up again and that continued for the rest of the day with showers on and off. After getting ready for exploring Brugge and getting our raincoats on we caught the bus into centre city. When we arrived into the city centre we wandered around the main tourist areas of Brugge, including the Markt, which is a large square surrounded by nice old stone buildings including the Belfort. After more looking around we went on a boat and did a canal tour. Brugge is a city built on and around natural canals which looks very spectacular, a nice taster for Venice really we guess. The tour was good, but it did show how disgusting the water and canals themselves are. Nevertheless it was a nice way to see the buildings that surround them. From the tour we went to the 'Church of Our Lady' and saw the Michelangelo 'Madonna and Child' sculpture. We were both keen to get a waffle and after wandering down numerous streets we finally came to the 'waffle' part of the town and had a waffle with fresh strawberries and cream. It was fantastic. Most shops have them pre-made, but we managed to time it to perfection and got one hot off the waffle-iron. It reminded me of a croissant in texture and taste, but was sweeter. After our waffle we walked through the Begijnhof; the communal home of a 13th century religious community of unmarried or widowed women. In between this we also managed to squeeze in a 'real' hot chocolate which was divine. The rounded off our day in Brugge. It was a nice small city, but rather touristy, which, even though we are tourists ourselves, is what we are trying to avoid as much as possible. Still it was well worth a visit. After finishing up in the city we caught the bus back to our campground and enjoyed some unusual free time in the van.
