Unexcused Absences France 2014 - Week 8 Recap (he said)

France 2014 – Week 8 Recap (he said)

by Kent 2 Sep 2014

Sunday morning we all packed overnight bags, left Après Ski in Revin, piled into Todd & Ted’s rented car, and drove across the Belgian border to Namur. The city is actually on the Meuse River, about a week downstream (by boat) from Revin, but T&T wanted to visit Brussels for a couple nights and Namur was on the way, so we stopped in for lunch and a quick walk around the center. It looks like a great place to spend some time, so hopefully we can explore Namur and the rest of the Meuse by boat one year.

Sunday morning in the hills above Revin

As a group, we felt obliged to sample the five most important things that Belgium offers the world; beer, waffles, mussels, chocolate, and the cartoon character Tin-TIn. We did pretty well on the beer, mussels and chocolate front, although after all the beer, mussels and chocolate we were too stuffed to eat waffles, at least the first night. Ted got his Tin-Tin fix at the Belgian Post Office, which knows a good thing and keeps a stash of Tin-Tin stamps at the ready to sell to people like Ted. I think the postmaster was a little bit in awe of the quantity of stamps Ted bought; the total cost came to three digits, and the first number was not a “one”.

Belgian beer

Belgian mussels

Todd and Ted in front of the Manneken Pis, Brussels

The Grand Place in Brussels

Todd put us up at the Sheraton Brussels, which is about a 15 minute walk from the old city center. After settling in, and drinking our free beer and wine at the hotel bar (Todd is a titanium/platinum/whatever-rare-earth-metal-is-popular-these-days member of the Starwood Properties loyalty program and thus gets all kinds of perks), we plunged into the tourist zone near the Grand Place. Hesitant to commit to a blatantly tourist restaurant, but really having no choice, we picked a place at random and ended up having a fabulous dinner of moule-frites (mussels and fries) – a true stroke of luck. After dinner we wandered over to the Grand Place and arrived about 30 seconds before the big nightly sound-and-light show began, adding credence to my theory that timing is everything.

Sound-and-light show, Brussels

Monday we explored the old city center a bit more, and tracked down the Manneken Pis, which is an enormously famous but yet tiny statue/fountain of a little boy doing pretty much what his name implies. That afternoon we headed back to the hotel to do some work while Todd went shopping. We never found out what Ted did that afternoon, although I suspect it was to buy more Tin-Tin stamps.

That evening we decided to seek out a non-tourist place to eat, and headed to the local’s restaurant district around Saint Catherine’s Church. A bit of wandering (in pretty heavy rain, by the way) and looking at menus and we discovered La Belle Maraîchère, a seafood restaurant that was packed (keep in mind that it was Monday) except for one table for four. Ted treated us to an amazing incredible delicious meal. The fish soup was outrageously good, and all our fish dinners won rave reviews. We paired dinner with a Burgundy white wine, Montagny Premier Cru from the Côte Chalonaise district, then washed the whole thing down with some Château d’Yquem Sauternes. Thank you, Ted!

The country you can’t see under the big ball of rain? That’s Belgium Monday evening.

Tuesday we woke up early to release the new Watermakers Air website for our Bahamas client, then visited the Brussels Automobile Museum. Although it did not have nearly the floor space nor the sheer number of cars as the Mulhouse Cité d’Automobile museum (from our canal travels last summer), it also was not as Bugatti-centric, and had a much wider variety of cars on display. After looking at cars for a couple hours we popped into the museum café for some lunch. As we walked in, we noticed that about half the tables were empty. Yet the manager came over waving his hands, saying, “no, nous sommes complete” (no, we are full). We stared, slack-jawed, at all the empty tables, and the manager repeated, in English this time, “no, we are full, no lunch.” He’s often wrong, I guess, but never in doubt.

Brussels Automobile Museum

Fortunately, across the street was a military museum, so we ducked in and asked if they had a lunch cafeteria. Yes, no problem, just follow the signs, we were told. So after weaving through a whole bunch of warplanes, including an F-86 Sabre, F-104 Starfighter, F-4 Phantom, and even a Russian MIG-23 Flogger, we found the cafeteria. The server handed us a menu, which we studied intently. As we went down the list, asking for items (sandwiches, soups, etc.), we were told, “we are out”. Of each item. Finally we asked, “what do you have for lunch?” “Ham pasta,” came the reply. It sounded ok, I guess, and it was kind of tasty, if you dumped enough hot sauce on it, but the order arrived 55 minutes after we placed it. What were they doing, milling the flour to make the pasta? But as a bonus we had time to visit the military museum, which was definitely worth a stop. The lesson of the story is, if you want lunch at the Brussels Automobile Museum, go across the street to the Brussels Air Force Museum. And then be sure to order the ham pasta, preferably about an hour before you intend to eat.

A Russian MIG-23. Note the US-designed rocket launcher pod hanging under the fuselage.

Tuesday afternoon, we returned to the boat. The next morning Todd took the car for a luxury visit to Luxembourg (he enjoys his luxuries and can only take so much “camping” onboard our boat – can’t say I blame him), and then Heather, Ted and I continued downstream (north) on the Meuse, arriving in Vireux-Wallerand. For a modest parking spot in a modest little village, it has the best capitainerie, an excellent boulangerie, and amazing boucherie/charcuterie. The butcher had already closed for the evening but was hanging out in his doorway flirting with a local resident of the female persuasion, and he kindly invited me in after seeing me gaze longingly at his display cabinet, so I bought some home-made saucisse and merguez for the grill that evening.

Dinner on deck in Vireux-Wallerand

Thursday morning we cycled up a small hill (Ted claims it was more like the side of Mont Blanc) to visit a Camp Romain, a lightly fortified hilltop camp in mostly continuous use from about the 3rd through the 14th centuries. After lunch we cruised north for two hours, crossed the border into Belgium (Après Ski is now an international traveler!), and continued another three hours to Dinant. The change upon entering Belgium was drastic. The valley was about the same, a gently flowing river winding between green hills and rock cliffs, but the architecture changed significantly, and the centuries of accumulated bread-baking knowledge residing just a few kilometers away apparently has not managed to cross the border into Belgium. The residents speak plausible French, their history is closely intertwined with the French, but they can’t make a baguette to save their souls. Oh well, at least they make waffles.

View from the Camp Romain

Dinant is incredibly picturesque, even more so as you approach by water. The town is clustered under the steep hills on the left bank and the even steeper cliffs on the right bank. A single bridge, lined with giant saxophones (more on this in a minute), links the two halves. The city provides ample parking for boats, and there is a nice Maison de Tourisme, numerous restaurants, a gorgeous citadelle, and as a bonus is also home to the Leffe monastery, where monks from over 500 years ago leaned to brew a particularly tasty beer. There is both a Leffe Museum for learning about beer brewing and a Leffe Café for lunch.

Arriving in Dinant, Belgium

The city’s favorite son is one Adolphe Sax, a musician who liked the projection of brass instruments and the agility of woodwinds, and after some trial and error in the early 1840’s came up with the instrument that bears his name. For you musicians out there, he based the left-hand keywork on the oboe, and the right-hand keywork on the clarinet. Today, Dinant is saxophone crazy, and there are sculptures, statues, and a museum dedicated to their native son and his work.

Saxophones lining the main bridge

Friday morning we moved the boat a hundred yards downstream and tied up in front of a Texaco station whose pumps were maybe 15 meters from the boat. We added three 20-liter jugs of diesel to the tanks – marinas that sell fuel are almost nonexistent, so we refuel the boat by hauling jugs from regular automobile fuel stations. Meanwhile, Todd returned from Luxembourg, and then we all went out for a farewell lunch at Café Leffe. T&T drove back to Paris, and we took a short but steep cable car up to the Citadelle that perches 100 meters above the Église Notre-Dame and the center of town.

View from the Citadelle looking south

Dinant has had quite a bit of bad luck over the centuries. First, in 1466, the Dukes of Burgundy punished an uprising by throwing 800 citizens into the river and setting the city on fire. Next, in the 16th and 17th century wars between France and Spain, the city suffered destruction, famine, and epidemics. It was briefly captured by the Austrians at the end of the 18th century, and it again suffered badly during WW I; after a short battle with the French troops holed up in the Citadelle, the Germans decided to make an example of the town by executing about 10 percent of the civilian population and wrecking numerous buildings. But all is now forgiven, and flags from all the European countries (including Spain, Austria, and Germany) fly from the bridge.

A Belgian château

At 6pm we untied our lines and turned upstream (south) and began our cruise back to France. The big commercial locks stay open until 7:30 so we had enough time to get to Waulsort, a small town on the Meuse River not far from the French border that has a marina run by their local Yacht Club. It’s an interesting setup; the marina facilities lie on the right bank, the town lies on the left bank, and since there are no bridges for a long way in either direction the Yacht Club runs a small, hand-operated cable ferry that shuttles people between the town and marina.

Meuse River near Waulsort

Saturday morning we cruised to Givet, just inside the French border, with the intention of visiting their Citadelle, but rain showers kept us from attempting the long walk and after lunch we continued on to Vireux-Wallerand. At Vireux we visited the same butcher we met on Wednesday evening and bought some more saucisse and boudin blanc for our upcoming dinners.

Our fun menu translation for the week came from our first night in Brussels, where the dessert item tarte aux pommes (apple tart) was translated as “apple pie outbreak”. And the backhanded compliment of the week came from a Dutch man we met during the French-language tour of the DInant Citadelle, who said to us, “Oh, you speak French surprisingly well… for Americans.”

France 2014 Week 8 Numbers