If I don’t see another example of two lanes getting cut down
to one because of road construction any time soon, that’ll be fine with me.
We were scheduled to do a lot of driving in Belgium
today, and we did a lot of driving in Belgium
today. In fact, we probably did a little
more than we planned to, as (it seemed) every few miles there were detours
because of road construction, or long waits while traffic going one direction
on a suddenly one lane road stopped those of us heading in the other direction
on the suddenly one lane road. Now,
don’t get me wrong. I’m all for road
construction & repairs. After all, I
live in Michigan, where a road
hasn’t been fixed since the early 1900s.
But when you have to go kilometers out of your way to get somewhere, or you
find yourself going in the totally opposite direction from which you
intended...
Ah, well. That’s life
on the road, I guess.
We actually did get to a lot of nice things today. Loraine wanted to spend the day exploring the
areas of the Ardennes where many interesting World War
II figures came and went, and we did that.
And by doing so, we were able to visit a lot of nice little Belgian
towns with names like Spa and Rachamps and Stoumont. In fact, here’s Loraine in Stoumont, where
their police station flies the flags of the Belgium,
the E.U., and the 82nd Airborne!
Two of the towns, though, rate a little mention, and those
would be Malmedy and Eupen.
Malmedy was a place we had quickly visited before and that I
wanted to explore a little further. It’s
about half the size of Marquette, and one of those places where there is a TON
of road construction going on. Here’s
what it looks like (on one of the few streets that wasn’t being repaired)—
Actually, in both population and the way it’s laid out it’s
faintly reminiscent of Bayeux, our
usual home in Normandy. If you recall, we had planned on renewing our
vows in Normandy this year, but that
didn’t work out. If it had, it might’ve
looked a little like this—
This is the city hall
of Malmedy, where a wedding had
just taken place. See all the stuff
laying on the ground outside the door?
Those are red and silver paper hearts that everyone threw at the bride
& groom (instead of rice). So since
we couldn’t get married again, we walked through the hearts.
I guess that’s the closest we’ll come this year.
The other thing we did in Malmedy? We stopped at a bakery!
While Loraine was munching on a piece of rhubarb cake, I had
a piece of triple layer cherry cake with a real whipped cream frosting. The thing (pictured above) was bigger than my
hand, and only cost one euro and 70 cents (about $3 American). Gemma from Gophers—if you’re reading this, I know
what you can try making some day!!
8-)
We had one objective and one objective only at Eupen, and
that was to stop at the holy grail, which we did—
This is the sign to the Jacques Chocolate museum and factory
outlet store, right on the grounds of the Jacques Chocolate factory. It was an amazing place inside, filled with
rows and walls and displays of chocolate of every kind. Our jaws dropped when we saw something else,
too. Normally, a big bar that would cost
6 or 7 dollars was being sold for (gulp) a Euro and a half.
That’s when we realized that we had a problem. No, not a “problem” with us being addicted to
chocolate. The problem we realized we
had was that we forgot to bring an extra suitcase with which to bring home our chocolate.
Gulp.
However, because of all of our driving we didn’t get to
spend as much time as we would’ve wanted in places like Eupen and Spa, places
that looked like we should further explore.
And if we ever DO come back, we’ll know to bring the extra luggage. In fact, Loraine’s already realized that when
we travel she puts everything in her backpack, which means she only has one
carry on. And since on airlines you can
bring a carry-on AND a personal item, and her backpack is technically a
“personal item”, we’re already scoping out something along the lines of a
hard-shelled mini carry on.
You know, so we can carry all the chocolate home.
Speaking of which, I know everyone always gets a kick out of
seeing what we bought, so here’s my haul for the first two days—
That’s not counting what Loraine bought, and what we’ve
already eaten. And even with that, we
still have nine days left to go. What do you think the pile will look like
then?
No animal pictures today, so I’ll leave you with business
here in Bastogne—
Just when he thought he was out, they pulled him back in again. And for pizza and paninis, no less!!!
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