Light bulbs, Big houses, Warthogs and a wired up Castle lobby.

Wednesday March 25, 2015

We said our goodbyes to Ypres and Benoit, and decided to head to southern Belgium for the night.  That's the sweet thing about a tiny country, if you want to see another part, you don't need to eat up a bunch of days doing it.

So the night prior to leaving, we fired up Expedia and Google maps to see where we were going.  The winning area was the Namur region.  We focused on a town called Dinant and the surrounding area.  

Man once you get outside of Brussels, the Belgian countryside is pretty sleepy.  Many of the towns and villages that we passed through had very little activity, and only a hand full of shops or restaurants that appeared open.

Below are a bunch of photos from the day.

Love the European markets, and their plentiful fresh cut flowers. 

A wee little estate that we passed along the way. 

"And here, you can clearly see the difference between a 120W bulb and a 60W bulb."

If you have been lucky enough to see my homemade lawn edge work, you will quickly realize that I am not capable of keeping my hedges like this guy keeps his.

A castle along the way that is under going a major reno.

I'm pretty sure this means that they DONT want you to come in .

How would you like to shovel that sidewalk?

We went inside the chateau, it was ok, nothing to write home or blog about......ugh, wait...

Floor detail throughout the Chateau

Some buildings along the river in Dinant, Belgium.

Dining town centre.

Our castle home for the night.  Chateau de la Poste,  The tower on the right was our room.  Quite a bargain at 92 euros for the night!

Relaxing in the lobby bar of the castle, mostly because that is where the wifi lives.....

Thursday March 26, 2015

Today was a travel and shopping day! We drove down to Luxembourg to hit an outlet mall, then made our way up to Lille, France.

The morning sun lights up the valley view from our hotel room.

Bronwyn not so happy that I woke her up so she could see the sunny valley...

Along the way, we tried to find the abandoned Chateau Miranda.  We were quite excited to see this place, but unfortunately the property is blocked off, and we could not access the Chateau.  The rain was coming down pretty hard, and we lacked the required energy to ignore the KEEP OUT sign and hop the fence.  As a consolation, in the neigbouring town of Houyet, we found possible the best patisserie in Belgium.   The make homemade chocolate easter eggs that are off the charts.  Patisserie Myriam and Dany Gerlache.  If you are in the hood, GO!

In our quest to find Miranda, we stumbled upon the 15th century fortified, Castle of Veves.

The village of Houyet, Belgium, home to some ridiculously good chocolate!

 With a bag full of pastries, baguettes and chocolate eggs, we headed towards Lille, France.