Dear Reader,
The past weekend I went to Dinant with Karolien and her parents in their mobilhome. After arriving on Friday, we were so tired that we did little else than going to sleep (see picture 1). On Saturday we first went for a bike ride on rail road tracks on adapted go-carts with wheels without tires. As a direct consequence, we are all in perfect shape now: when not biking ourselves, we sat on the passenger seats as if it was a power plate. The ride consisted out of two parts: going forward and going back. In the mean time, there was time for rest (see pictures 3, 4 and 5).
In the afternoon, we first took a walk around the Abbey of Maredsous. The nature was just stunning at times (see pictures 6 and 7). A guided tour around the monastery soon followed, yet this wasn’t completely satisfactory. The guide was perfectly capable of speaking Dutch (the tour was officially bilingual), yet even though some Dutch children were present, she preferred to speak French exclusively. This didn’t seem to bother her, as this was a “cultural event”, implying that addressing children was redundant (see pictures 8 and 9). As a Flemish person I am fully aware of the language issues in Belgium, but I felt most sorry for those children that seemed genuinely interested in what this lady had to say. But – apparently – the majority rule seemed to apply here and only French was used during the tour (making some jokes about an ‘alarmbel’ didn’t seem to help and could upset some other – very friendly – Walloons, so we all just went along with it). In the evening we ate the Maredsous cheese that was bought and went for a small, local tour around the area.
On Sunday we headed for Dinant itself. We visited the Citadel (see picture 11) where the father of Karolien had his picture taken when he was 3 and 19 (or 20). I took a similar picture now, so it would be interesting to see those three pictures next to each other. After taking a boat ride on the Maas (see picture 12), we headed back to Kessel-Lo.
Arriving on Friday
Making sandwiches for lunch on the rail road track
Lunch after biking uphill and waiting to go back
Waiting to get permission to bike back
Resting while waiting
Scenery during our walk
Walking
Buying tickets for the bilingual tour
The tour guide making the children bored
In the evening: thinking of new Bongo gift certificates
A (much) friendlier tour guide on the citadel in Dinant
The boat ride
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