Euro Trip - 1

Well last weekend was my first trip outside Leuven. WE went for a road trip, from the S-E to the N-W part of Belgium in 2 days. First and foremost would like to thank my friend’s company for the car and fuel, without which this trip would not have been possible.

S came to pick me up from work on Friday evening. We went to my place packed my bag for the weekend and left immediately. First and foremost on our mind was to fuel up the car so the trip could be done. Gave a full tank food to the car and we zoomed away towards Mechelen. With the car taken care we needed to fuel our self for the evening. I must tell you guys here that Europe is dead place after 7 in the evening. You are not going to find many places open. So we did find a Turkish place after looking around for sometime. We then left towards S's place to crash for the evening. My friends place is a brilliant place. It is on the outskirts of a small town, a nice 5 bedroom place, with only him staying there for now. Behind his house is an open green field heading of towards a hillock. It was decided that we leave the next day at about 7:30 in the morning.

Maps of the region can be found in the following link, just zoom into the Belgium region for details:

http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/gbr/dyn/controller/mapPerformPage?strLocation=Namur&strCountry=eur&google=1

The next day we did manage to leave by 8. I must say I was surprised coz I was not expecting to leave before 8:30 earliest. Headed towards Mechelen to find get some breakfast. But everything closed so early on a Saturday. So decided to drive straight towards Namur and look for breakfast there.

Namur is in the southern part of Belgium. This region is called Vallonia. We drove for about 2 hours along some brilliant roads and the scenery kept improving as we got closer to Vallonia. We reached Vallonia at about 10am. Parked our car and headed towards the town center for some breakfast. I had a waffle, and was ready for the rest of the morning. One of the roads leaving the town center had a huge Saturday market. It was a nice bright sunny day and it felt like the whole town was there (felt like I was walking on Brigade Road back home on a Saturday eve). We walked around for some more time looking at this wonderful city. Did the mandatory photo taking around the town center and headed towards Namur Citadel. It is a fort and right next to the Meuse River. My friend wanted to drive to the top, but I insisted on walking to the top. It was a nice short walk for about 30 min. Kept clicking away at the city around us as we got higher. The view from top was brilliant. We could see what a big town Namur actually was. Then we headed back down, this time on the car way but a slight of-road kind of setup. By now it was 1 in the afternoon. So again as usual LUNCH TIME. Went into another pizzeria. It was great fun. The person at the counter did not understand a word of English, and neither of us knew French to talk to a person. Being a vegetarian it was very difficult to explain what I did not want on my pizza. So the chef ended up taking one ingredient at a time and asking me if he could put it on top of my pizza. For all our efforts I must say the pizza was good. After food we headed towards Liege via Huy along the Meuse River. It was a brilliant drive, with the river on one side and cliffs on the other. As we entered Liege must say the town was completely dead. No activity of any kind at all. But must say the whole town was a setup for one of the Arcelor factory. So for the first time saw that what an Indian owns. It was a huge factory. But sadly there was not much we could do at this place. But yea the town as such was not very impressive. Just spent about 30 min and left for out next destination Spa. It was another great drive. Felt like most of the scenes were out of DDLJ. Natural Europe is a beautiful place. Reached Spa and had some coffee and went to a spa at Spa, just to find out the rates. Must say it was quite expensive and neither of us wanted to go inside. Came back down and had a game of mini-golf (which I won :D). We then headed towards the race circuit, our main reason to go to Spa. The circuit is right in the middle of no where, in a valley kind of place with hills on either sides. Hope to come back here for the race if I can find a decent group of ppl to go with. There was some race happening but we had reached that place at only about 7:30pm so everything was over. Now the best part of the day. We did what many people would be foolish enough to try. We had heard of a good Indian restaurant at a place called Antwerp, which is located in the N-W part of the country and we were at 730 in the S-E part. We decided to try and make it to the place to have our dinner. I must say S u r great to drive that long. It was a wonderful drive with most places driving close to 150 kmph just to make it on time. And must with the sunset at 9 we drove into Antwerp just in time. But to our bad luck the place was crowded and he did not have tables for rest of the eve. So we packed some food and headed back to S place for a much deserved rest. WE ate food and decided that we will take the next day after we wakeup.

Sunday morning woke up at about 9. We decided to leave by 11. But what felt more normal left at 12:30. This time heading towards Gent. Reached Gent and put our car in front of a residential house. The owner of the house had written a letter in dutch where the only word I understood was ‘Police’ when we returned later in the day. So then we did a bit of walking around Gent. Had lunch, and this time no pizza but a wonderful pasta. Then we went into this beautiful church (photos not there coz did not feel right taking photos of a place of worship). It was really relaxing with a guy playing the harp and felt really good. Came out and some sightseeing later headed towards Brugge. At Brugge, like other towns I have seen so far on a Sunday, I was expecting a no activity of any kind. All shops closed. But I must say shops were open on a Sunday in Europe. This is huge guys. When I told my cousin this even he was surprised, but also told me that the shop keepers have decided to keep their store open on a few Sundays around the summer season. So the place was quite busy, but our camera went dead L. So no more photos after this point except from the phone a couple. Spent very little time at Brugge, as we were heading to the coast to a place called Oostende. The drive to Oostende was interesting, considering our side was completely empty but the opposite had a huge traffic backing. It was bright and sunny weekend and most of them were returning from the coast on Sunday evening. We had a little bit trouble finding the beach, but did manage to find it eventually. And I washed my hands in the second of the great oceans of the world. The water was super cold, with the real cold sea breeze blowing in. I was feeling really cold there. So we headed back to home as it was getting late. As I had expected we got stuck in slow moving traffic for some time. Finally it cleared and we drove home. Reached S’s place again to pick up my stuff and then headed back to Leuven. And reached home after a great weekend of a lot driving, which was spoilt to some extent by a bad news I heard as I entered Leuven. All in all a wonderful weekend. And Cheers to that.

Photos in the link i send u.

*******************DISCLAIMER*******************

All spelling mistakes in the above are intentional, and provided for your learning of what not to do.

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