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Published: March 28th 2006
Saturday
A nice photo of the Ardennes.I had such a good time with ESN on the "Gent by Night" tour, why not follow up with an ESN weekend in the Ardennes?
We left Gent at about 5:30 on Friday afternoon and took a chartered bus to the little town of Hastiere. On the way we stopped at the Belgian equivalent of a truck stop. Not a rest area, but one of the big inter-country convenience stores. It was like any other convenience store in Arkansas, except for the resaurant spanning the highway. I'd never seen anything like it before. It was built like an overpass, but had a restaurant on top instead of a road. It's really quite an intelligent design because it is accessible from both sides of the highway.
In Hastiere we stayed in a nice old building that was set up like a hostel. It had lots of rooms on the top two floors, and a large dining area downstairs.
Friday evening we had a spaghetti dinner, then a few festivities.
Saturday we got up and took a walk in the forest and the surrounding countryside. Honestly, the forest wasn't much different from back home. But it was very nice
Interstate Restuarunt
Maybe I should say Inter-country restauraunt. It spanned the entire highway. to get out of the city and see a little bit of the Belgian countryside. The weather that day was sunny, and cool, but not too cold. A very nice day for a walk. When we got back to town there was a rather large market (for the size of the town) going on right outside our building.
Saturday night we had the International Dinner. Prior to the trip everyone formed groups of three or four and submitted recipes from their country. Christina and I paired up with our friend Marko (from Slovenia) and I provided the recipe. When thinking about a typical American dish, meat and carbs immediately came to mind. So we cooked hamburger steak with gravy and potatoes. You just cook hamburger patties in a skillet with sliced onions, make a little gravy out of the drippings, and serve with potatoes. How can you go wrong? I specifically picked a simple recipe because I wasn't sure what type of cooking conditions I would experience. It's a good thing I didn't go for anything complicated because the kitchen ended up being a freakin' madhouse. Imagine 8 burners going full blast, and anywhere from 2-4 people attending each
Our Place
Here's where we stayed for the weekend. burner, with everyone cooking something different. It was crazy. There was so much hot oil flying around that if I'd had my safety glasses with me I would have worn them...seriously. But everything turned out alright. No one got horribly scarred by blazing hot oil, and nothing caught on fire. The only minor catastrophes were the half a dozen times we blew the ciruit breaker, but a little darkness and danger never hurt anybody. The completed dinner was fantastic. My stuff turned out pretty good, I had some kind of fried potato that was delicious, a fantastic Spanish omlette, some ground meat wrapped in cabbage leaves that was wonderful, and believe it or not the Italian guys made pasta bolognese that was some of the best I've ever had.
That night we had an evening of music, fun, and sangria wine.
Sunday morning we stopped in the town of Dinante on the way home. But I'll save that for another entry.
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Teresa
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Hello!
Another great story - I am so glad you are keeping a travel journal. Note - the picture titled "Friday night" - you have spirits dancing through that picture - at least two of them I would guess! missing you! TT