Settling into Belgium

A half-day’s train journey (and a harrowing transfer between stations in Lille) took us from Paris to Namur, Belgium. This is a lovely brick and stone city, a university town overlooked by a citadel of rich international history. Louis IV coveted this town, and Napolean himself has visited.

Our first day here we spent setting up house, grocery shopping, figuring out the computerized laundromat (with instructions only in French), and wandering the winding alleys and river fronts. Our second day, we got right down to it and climbed up the hill behind our apartment building to the citadel that towers over Namur.

The visitor center was awesome and had multimedia presentations (in English) on the history of the town from its limestone formation to demilitarization in the 1970s. The coolest thing was the guided tour of the tunnels that snake underground all over the hill. We got to explore 1.5 km of the chilly labyrinth, hearing about the Spanish, the French, the Austrians, the Dutch, and the Belgians who have added to the citadel and tunnel network over the centuries. Again, it was a pretty amazing multimedia performance and definitely the girls’ favorite part of the day!

Some other day (how many days have we been here now?) we walked down the river promenade a few miles to the next town’s little strawberry museum. This district produces some huge amount of Europe’s total strawberry crop. We think; the museum is in French. Except for the informational video, which was definitely in English and a bit distracting in its flowery descriptions of the fruit: “The strawberry is a demanding lady. Madame loves the sun, which has her blushing with pleasure…. With so many dimples gazing at you like so many seductive eyes.” Yikes.

The best thing about the visit was the small fruit garden in which we were welcomed to taste what we found. And boy, did we find a lot to taste!

And I mean a lot!

Generally, we spend our days walking from somewhere to somewhere else, with ample stops along the way at patisseries (for turnovers) and ice cream shops (for waffle cones) and frites stands (for fries dipped in mayo) and playgrounds (for beer – seriously). We’ve been calling dibs on houses, on boats, on entire blocks. We’ve been trying new flavors (violet ice cream, yuzu macarons, fig yogurt). And we’ve been sleeping very well!

We are here for a good number of days yet. If I knew what day it was today, I’d know how many we had left. Vacation is so lovely, and we are so lucky! Anyway, we have enough time that we have planned a few day trips to neighboring communities, a river boat experience, and another laundry excursion at least. I have to say, Belgium is being lovely for us. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that we are visiting near to their Independence Day, and their football team is rocking the World Cup. (As I write, we are listening to cars honk and neighbors yell each time the Red Devils score a goal.) We’re happy here!