March 26:
To Liege today with a couple of stops to check out possible campgrounds along the way, as we were aware there are no campgrounds very near the city. We didn’t find anything suitable so drove right into Liege to enquire at the tourist information.
The main purpose of the day was to rendezvous’s with our son, Jeremy. Jeremy is our older son, who lives in Saudi Arabia, and is the father of Julian and Nyah who we visit in Amstelveen. Jeremy is in Netherlands for his spring break, and is joining us for the weekdays while the kids are in school.
We met him at the spectacular modern rail station at 4:30pm.. a lovely meet up, as we hadn’t seen him since last summer.
Then the predicament was still to find a place for the night… our little van is not big enough for 3 people. We drove back to the centre to check out a hotel that the TI had recommended, Hotel Passerelle. It was a quaint little European style hotel… small rooms, tiny elevator and narrow staircases, paper thin walls, but clean and very close to the town centre. 85 euro. The dilemma was still that it had two beds, and there were three of us. The van was parked at the roadside just outside the hotel, so the conclusion was Bill and Pat in the hotel room and Jeremy in the inconspicuous upper bunk in the van. No-one got a particularly great sleep due to the snorer in the next hotel room, and occasional commotion on the street, but it was OK.
We did walk around Liege for a couple of hours in the evening and in the next morning, including a lovely dinner out at a traditional restaurant, an then breakfast at a lovely little cafe. An interesting city with an assortment of historical churches, villas and the odd palace or two, gathered alongside the Meuse.
March 27:
We moved on to rural Belgium today. Jeremy was looking for mountain biking territory, so we settled on the region around Spa. Google found us a fairly large campground and cabins “domain” called Spa D’Or. They have dozens and dozens of small cabins and campsites. The weather is unfortunately rainy and coldish, so we decided we may as well take a whole cabin and settle in for two days rather than using the van. As much as we love sleeping in the van, with the three of us a cabin is much more convenient, to say nothing of the luxury of a full kitchen, shower and indoor toilet!
Pat and I drove down to Spa for a walking tour while Jeremy took to the biking trails. Spa is, indeed, a spa town, famed in the 18th and 19th centuries for its healing waters… a series of springs with heavy carbolic acid content. We had a taste of the water at the info centre… a lot like tonic water. We did take a ride up the funicular to the more modern era heated pools complex, but couldn’t stomach the 20 euro each price to go for a bathe.
We made our planned rendezvous’s with Jeremy at the info centre, and arrived right on time to find a cold, wet and mud soaked cyclist, but thoroughly stoked with the adventure of his two hour ride.
Back to our cozy cabin for the evening, and I am listening to Jeremy and Pat songwriting together as I catch up on my notes.
March 28:
Still an over cast and rainy day, so glad we booked the cabin another night. After an easy going morning, Jeremy set off on his bike again while Pat and I drove over to Stavelot, another city in the region with some interesting heritage and museums. The primary goals was the Abbaye of Stavelot, an 19th C villa built on the site of the medieval abbey. Enroute, Pat and I got distracted by an hour of grocery shopping, and a 20 minute detour due to accidentally taking a freeway on ramp instead of a roundabout exit. Arghhh.
Incredibly, as we arrived at the Abbaye, Jeremy arrived at exactly the same moment as we parked, from over the muddy hillside trails, just as we met up with him just right yesterday!
The abbaye museum was a fairly serious affair with excellent but very detailed historical minutia of the various abbotts and lords. They were very influential prelates and political influencers, but really… ho hum.
The basement had a display of some much more interesting 20th C race cars and motorcycles based on the nearby internationally famed Francorchamps auto racing centre.
On the way home we decided to take small roads, and found ourselves nearby the race track, so of course we had to check it out. What a surprise! It is a huge complex of racing infrastructure, with the track and extensive garages, pit stop facilities, hotels and supporting warehouses. We enquired at the security gate and the guard said, sure, just park over there and walk in. We could hear the cars roaring around the track as we approached the soggy and empty bleachers right across from the pits. There were a few cars screaming around the track… apparently a class of small sedans… I recognized a couple of VW Golfs and a BMW, but obviously of a modified class, as the were roaring by at speeds far in excess of your granny’s shopping buggy.
The cars were not racing, as such, but were certainly not just poking along. I guess they are private owners and companies doing trials with their vehicles. As we watched, we noticed that some more “Formula” type racers were getting ready in the pits, so after a while the sedan racers were called in, and a dozen formula racers screamed out of the pit. They were a bit of a mixture, from a few open shell formula one cars, to a few enclosed grand prix type racers. The noise from just these few cars was ear busting… imagine what a real race would be like! Great fun!
Home to the cabin and some more songwriting at the table as I write. We’ll see how that turns out….
Pat flirting with Georges Simenon in Liege:
