Impressions of Belgium

It's flat and it's wet.

There's a lot of farmland, dotted with small towns with their austere churches.

There's a lot of history here from the past hundred years. Lots of Great War cemeteries and battlefields.

I found a gunner pilbox in the middle of a town.

Everywhere we went, people asked us about the upcoming US election. The opinion all over Europe is very pro-Obama. One guy commented, "Everyone I meet from the states is voting for Obama. So who would vote for the other guy?". We could only conclude that the Other Guy's supporters just don't get out much.

We spent a night in Watou, where St. Berndardus is brewed. The brewery has a really cozy B&B attached to it if you don't mind the smell of malty hops invading your sleep.

Those tall post is where the hops are grown- they are all over this area and they call this the Hop Capital of Belgium. They had just had their hop-harvest, so the hop fields were a little bare.

Watou is right on the border of France, and the Mont du Cats is close by on a hillside, where the monks make cheese and beer. We took the pilgrimage up the hillside in pouring rain, giving the monastery a rather mysterious air to it.

Watou also had a fantastic little town square filled with good places to eat.

We had the best dinner of our trip at 't Hommelhof.

It was a fantastic find- they are making fresh, locally derived food in inventive ways, but not too fussy. I love places like this.

Brouwerij

In the spirt of the place, despite my palatial resistance, I did end up seeing, touring, tasting at a few of the classic breweries in Belgium.

Most of them have a history going back hundreds of years. Monks seem to be the #1 instigators as far as the brew industry is concerned. Based on marketing, all of Belgium was populated with jolly drunk monks at one point. Or so I am led to believe.

Inevitably, the back of the rental car became stacked with cases of suds. It sounded like Marly's ghost was accompanying us for the ride. Except instead of chains, Marly was on a bender and clinking bottles instead.

Apparently, getting a few cases of this Westlederen stuff is a really big deal for beer geeks. Getting any at all involves having your license plate taken down and a monk limiting the amount of cases you can haul away, and you can only get this particular beer at the monastery. People line up for hours to take some away.

Brugge

Hi there!

I've been traveling a bit and just been kind of scattered in general, hence the inability to sit down and collect my thoughts for more than a minute or two. Ah, life.

We did go on a what amounted to a beer-buying trip to Belgium lately.

I do not like to drink beer. I dislike the stuff and prefer the grape and the distilled versions of grains. I am easily persuaded to go on road trip adventures though and I am sympathetic to the cause- good beer is hard to find in Paris and people go to great lengths to acuire the good stuff. A few hours north of Paris, you hit the Belgium border and our buying spree begins. The beer is cheaper than bottled water here.

Belgium also seems to get the brunt of the gusty driving rains from the North Sea. Paris seemed downright balmy compared to it.

We centered ourselves in Brugges, a medieval city filled with gorgeous old streets and canals.

It's a breathtakingly beautiful city. Its labyrinth of cobblestone streets were easy to get completely lost trying to navigate, but the pleasant surprises that come with getting completely lost was exactly what I wanted.

The 13th century bell tower dominates the main square of the city.

Sometimes these rainy days surprise you with a brief bright hit of sunlight, leaving the world saturated with color.

Belgian chocolate is really different from French chocolate- it's sweeter and creamier- and it's everywhere.

But it's pretty obvious from the fact that every cafe and bar had a beer menu the thickness of the NYC phone book, this was a serious beer town.