Beer Fears

This is the way that Keith describes the "morning after" anxiety that can occur after a big night out. We had major beer fears last night after we left Nathan at his hotel in Brussels and headed back to work in London after a "big week out" with all of you in Belgium.

Yesterday was actually a great day. When ME dropped us off at the station, we found a vending machine at the train station that sold tubes, oil, and other bike parts! Such a bike friendly area! After an hour long train ride, we had a minor brush with European bureaucracy when we couldn't figure out how to get all of our bikes on the train. It was the classic story of everyone sending us everywhere else...until we circled back to the original folks and they magically took our bikes from us.

We then walked out into the Brussels sunshine to look for Nathan's hotel to drop our stuff...only to get mildly lost and stuck with all our stuff in a serious downpour. We waited out the rain for about 10 minutes and then made it to the hotel, checked out Nathan's cool pod toilet, and then headed out to check out the hood and get some lunch. The neighborhood was really interesting...very artsy, a little bohemian, with a strong Muslim population. We enjoyed our last belgian wafffles and then Jeff ran off to Midi to catch his train (he was literally running down the street).

Then Nathan, Keith, and I took a walk and ended up on the Avenue Louise, the fancy shmancy shopping district. We window shopped and ended up in a Vitra store http://www.vitra.com/nl-be/home/ , which had amazing furniture at outrageous prices and we happily sat our weary butts on everything in the store. Then we went and watched an interesting game of Belgian handball but like baseball that had drawn quite a crowd in the Grand Place (I have googled but can't find any info).

After shopping, we stopped for our last Belgian beer which Nathan treated us to because we were out of Euros (Thank you Nathan!) and picked up our stuff at the hotel and headed off to the train...which is where the beer fears started to settle in.

What an amazing holiday! Thank you all so much for making it really special. We look forward to seeing you again on the next adventure.

Enjoy France! Keith and I have decided to swear off all cheese and ham products for the next few days to let our systems recover.

A feeling of perfection

Dave here - quick post -

Right now, I am totally at peace with the world. I am truly enjoying a perfect Belgian Kriek, strawberries and bananas dipped in melted Belgian Chocolate, listening to some very chill music by Alexi Murdoch and greatly enjoying the company of 11 wonderful friends.

Last night in Belgium - couldn't be any better.

wza out. :)

Slideshows

Take a peak at some photos from the trip, starting on arrival in Venice and continuing through today. I'll continue to add photos as the trip continues.

Watou to Oudenarde

Today found us embarking on our longest (and last) leg of the trip...a metric century from the brewer's house at St. Bernardus Brewery to the Refuge Kappelberg near Oudenarde. This was a well-planned wind-at-our-backs cruise with a stop in Ieper for some cash and lunching stuffs and in Dadizele at the Rosarium for lunch and to swap drivers and riders. Dave and Jeff drove the first half of this while Linda and Lindsay drove the second.

The Menenpoort in Ieper commemorates the 54,896 commonwealth troops who died in WWI and have no graves.
Also in Ieper, the handiest dandiest little bike feature to assist in moving your bike below the train tracks at the station there:Also en route, this sweet canal fortification:
And, oddly, there were many witches set up around Beselare...more info on the phenomenon is here. One of the many witches we saw:
Once in Oudenarde, we found our way to the Refuge Kappelberg, a really really nice restored farmstead where we stayed for two nights under the watchful eye of host Tom, an unabashed talk-your-ear-off Belgian who thinks French soccer players are "pussies" and loved to promote Speculous, the Belgian-designed award winning and patented cinnamon flavored spread. It was in ice cream in a lot of places, but we hadn't had it in all it's forms until the Refuge. Thanks again for that Tom!

The Refuge:

The Refuge

Tonight and tomorrow we are staying in a wonderful little Bed and Breakfast that is South-East of Oudenaarde. We are having a splended evening enjoying the fabulous beer that we brought from St. Bernardus, where we stayed last night. It was a tough 100km ride with the first real hills that we have encountered here but it was well worth the effort. The place we are staying is a radically remodeled old farm from the 1780s. We have enjoyed an excellent group meal prepared by Jeff and fantastiche beer and wine.

LKR: The meaning of Trappist

Thursday morning CJ and I volunteered to take our turn driving and navigating, which suited me fine because I was starting to come down with a cold, and because it would give us more time in Bruges. We had fun perusing some shops and adding chocolate truffles to our lunch menu. On our drive to the Westvleteren Abbey, or Abdij St. Sixtus, we happened upon a great bike shop where I was able to get replacement parts from the great mechanic there (some things, like numbers and bike parts, are universal in language) and we found Emily a nice set of the paneers she was looking for.

I think someone has probably already blogged about the rarity of Westvleteren beer – the monks make only a limited supply and most beer stores run out early in the season – so I thought I’d add a bit about where the name “Trappist” comes from, as I’d been wondering our entire trip: (*Dave, note also…I think I’ve discovered where the “1664” beer name comes from…)

From Wikipedia: The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.: Ordo Cisterciensis Strictioris Observantiae), or Trappists, are a contemplative Roman Catholic religious order (see list of Catholic orders), that follows the Rule of St. Benedict. They are a branch of the Cistercians and like the other Cistercian orders they also have a women's branch commonly referred to as the Trappistines.

The order takes the name of "Trappist" from La Trappe Abbey or "La Grande Trappe" in Normandy in France, where it began as a reform movement in 1664, in reaction to the relaxation of practices in many Cistercian monasteries. The reform was led by Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé, originally the commendatory abbot of La Trappe. As commendatory abbot, de Rancé was a layman who obtained income from the monastery but had no religious obligations. After a conversion of life between 1660 and 1662, de Rancé formally joined the abbey and became its regular abbot in 1663.

The 48th chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict states "for then are they monks in truth, if they live by the work of their hands." Following this rule, most Trappist monasteries produce goods that are then sold to provide an income for the monastery. The goods produced can range from cheese, bread and other foodstuffs to clothing and coffins. As the order does not require abstention from alcohol, some monasteries produce and sell alcoholic beverages. Some monasteries in Belgium and the Netherlands, such as Orval Abbey and Westvleteren Abbey, brew beer both for the monks and for sale to the general public. Trappist beers contain residual sugars and living yeast, and, as bottle-conditioned beers do, will improve with age. These have become quite famous and are considered by many beer critics to be amongst the finest in the world.

LKR: Bruge and Damme - The home land

Wow! Bruges! Fun to return! And I feel very fortunate and thankful for the connection Jeff had! Jan (pronounced ‘yawn’ – or John in Flemish) - the father of a woman Jeff works with in London - lives in Bruges. Jan is a retired economist and former ambassador to Pakistan, who occasionally works for the local tourism office (I think?!) leading walking tours in Bruges. Jan led us all on a very wonderful and informative walking tour of Bruges and helped me appreciate, once again, how great it is to meet local residents who are willing to share their knowledge of a place with which they are intimately familiar.

Later in the afternoon CJ and I rode 6km to Damme – the motherland as I’ve been calling it. My maiden name, Van Damme, literally means “from Damme” and I learned from Jan that Damme, or dam, refers not just to a dam but more specifically to a separation of sea and salt water, as Damme used to be more of a port town. Belgium is slowly rising, and now the sea is much further away than it once was. Still, a canal built to transport goods from Damme to Bruges exists, and is accompanied by one of the most well known bike paths in Belgium. The small town of Damme was fortified in a star-shape during the Eighty Years’ War, and though the wall no longer remains, trees have been planted in its place so one can still see the outline of the star from the tower of the Church of Our Lady. I thought I’d also mention, mostly for Darren Wood’s sake, that in 1997, Damme was “promoted to Book-town, just as Hay-on-Wye.”