Roadtrip in Belgium

After almost 2 months of studying for my exams, I finally had some time to take a break and chill before my project internship started on the 8th of February. My plan was to go skiing or to do a city trip to a new country, but due to COVID I wasn't even able to leave my own country. So, I decided to take my friend on a 3-day-roadtrip around Belgium, because our own country is beautiful too and we don't even know it at times.

We started in Limburg, where we both live, and drove to Memento, an art installation in the middle of a cemetry in Borgloon, Limburg. The iron sculpture by Wesley Meuris, is definitely worth passing by, you can take some amazing pictures here and it radiates this calmness that you can only experience when standing inside the walls of the art work.

On our way to the second stop we came accross this amazing palace besides the road with huge gardens, so we had to make a pitstop to explore the gardens. The gardens were so big that you couldn't see it all at one glance, and they were so beautiful too. There was a museum next to the palace called the Africa Museum, so if you want to visit the palace to, just drive to the museum. We walked around for a bit, but soon found out that the gardens/ park was bigger than expected, so we had to turn around otherwise we weren't able to finish the rest of our roadtrip before sunset. I will definitely drive back to this place some other time, to just go for a walk, because I am positive that the park is beautiful to explore even more.

Our second stop was about an hour away, in Groenendaal. Here you can find the Royal Lodge of King Albert I. It is hidden in the forest, so you have to look for it a bit, but it isn't that hard to find. The royal lodge used to lookout over the racetracks, where horse races took place back in the days. Again, a beautiful spot to take pictures at and to take in nature. You can do a longer walk here if you want, but we only went to the lodge and then back to the car to head to our next stop.

Only 10 minutes further was our 3rd stop; Chateau de La Hulpe. A beautiful white castle that reminds me of the Netflix series "Bridgerton". Unfortunately the castle was already closed, because we started our road trip a bit too late. A huge tip for everyone is to make sure you check the time schedule, before leaving. When I looked it up before our trip it said that it was open until 6pm, but on the day itself it said only 1pm.

And again, because we left too late our last stop of the first day was a fail too. We wanted to go the Abbaye de Villers in Villers-la-Ville, but we arrived half an hour too late. We actually just wanted to go in to see the ruins of the cathedral and shoot some pics, but the lady at the desk wouldn’t let us in because it apparently takes 1 hour to see the whole thing. (Bummer 🙁 )

After our last 2 fails, we drove to Namur to our little Airbnb to have a cosy game night. Despite the little setbacks that day, we still had fun and the weather was absolutely amazing.

The next day we drove to Dinant, a very famous city in Wallonia (the French speaking part of Belgium). We parked our car at Rocher Bayard, a very high rock that is split in 2 that you need to drive through to get to the city centre of Dinant. We walked along the Meuse to Dinant, which was only about 15 minutes, to stretch our legs.

In the city centre we first crossed the bridge whereon you can see different saxophones representing several countries. There are multiple hints to saxophones all over Dinant because the famous Adolphe Sax was born there.

When you cross the bridge you can see the famous view of Dinant that you find all over the internet, with the Cathedral and the colourful houses. Beware, the pictures on the interent make the houses look way more colorful then they actually do, we were a bit dissapointed, but our pictures still turned out great. There is also a statue of Charles de Gaulle on this side of the water, because he was shot in the leg during WW I on this bridge. That is also why the bridge is named after him.

In Dinant you can visit the museum of Adolphe Sax (which we weren't interested in), climb the stairs (or take the cable car) to the top to visit the Citadel, which again was closed, so we couldn't visit it. And you can go into the Cathedral, also known as the Notre-Dame of Dinant, which we did. The Cathedral is absolutely beautiful from the insight with amazing glass work and stunning ceilings. It is a cute town to just stroll around for a bit and you can even do some shopping if you are feeling like it.

After this we walked back to our car and headed to Chateau de Walzin. Another hidden gem that you have to find in the woods. It is a huge castle standing on the edge of a cliff looking over the forest. You can walk to it and stand in the meadow below it to snap some pics or take a longer walk all the way to the top to get even cooler pictures. Because the weather hadn't been great in Belgium the past days, there was a lot of mud when we went to the Chateau. So a walk to the top was not something we wanted to do, we tip-toed as far as we could to reach the meadow at the bottom of the cliff to get a good look of the castle and then went back to our cars.

We also wanted to go to a Nature park called Furfooz, close to Dinant, but for some reason it is closed until December 2021 (as said on their website). Another fail for us :(

We took our car and drove to our final destination, which was Antwerp. We arrived around 5pm so we had just 1 hour left to do a little bit of shopping. After this, we ordered ourselves some takeout from "The Wokhouse" and ate it in our room at Hotel O at the Cathedral. It was a perfect ladies night with face masks, A Star is Born and our takeout. By the way; the breakfast at Hotel O was AMAZING 😋!

The next and final day we drove to the Verbeke Foundation about 20 minutes away from Antwerp. The Verbeke Foundation is a museum with multiple art collections. The works of bio-artists and artists working with living organisms are displayed here. We went there because one of our friends had recommended it. The entree fee was €10 for students, which I already thought was pretty expensive compared to some other musea I have been to in the past. To be completely fair, the Verbeke Foundation was not worth its money at all. Both my friend and I were a bit lost there, we found the art to be a bit strange and as a vegetarian it also wasn't very pleasant to see either pictures of dead animals or stuffed animals, or anything else involving dead animals. Outside you also have many art installations, which we also didn't find that interesting. I guess it is just a matter of what you are into and what kind of art you like, because we didn't like it at all, but our friend (who recommended it) loved it. I will just leave some pictures here, so you can judge for yourself.

After this failed museum visit we took our car and headed back to Limburg because the weather was extremely bad that day, so there wasn't much to do anyways. We cooked ourselves a lovely meal and watched a movie in the couch.

Our road trip was definitely a big success for both of us, even though we had some tiny setbacks, but we learned from this that you have to double check everything before leaving. Our next road trip can even be better than this one, which sounds very promising.

A bientôt!

Bisous