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Published: April 12th 2010
Day 16 was possibly the most amazing day since we started our holiday adventure...
We started off by getting up much later than we had planned to, and catching a train and then a bus out to the airport. We were meant to get there at 9am to pick up the hire car, but it didn't end up mattering. We were slightly worried that they would charge us exra for not being there at the time we said we would, but they didn't even mention it when we got there at 10.30 and signed all the paperwork. We had to pay a bit extra for being under 25, but we soon had the keys and were walking back through the airport feeling quite old since we were renting a car... I know that sounds a bit silly, but it was a very grown-up feeling!!
We had also decided to rent a tom-tom in case we couldn't find the maps on Danny's iPhone, which he has been downloading maps onto - but which we cannot view any maps on unless we have had the forethought to download while connected to the internet. The tom-tom ended up being pretty much a
huge waste (although it was pretty cheap anyway) as you need to know the exact address of where you are going, and the touch screen was rubbish. After having the amazing technology and the excellent touchscreen that comes with an iPhone, we had no patience for the tom-tom and wanted to throw it out of the car window. Since they were going to charge us 300 euro if we happened to lose it, we decided it would be best not to throw it out the window, and yelled at it a lot instead.
Using the phone and a small paper map, we found our way to the first of the castles, the Castle of Veves. We were a bit disappointed to see that they are doing work on it at the moment, which means the photos aren't quite what we had hoped for, but all the same, it was a lovely looking castle, and looking around it was very interesting.
It has stayed in the same family for several hundred years, and is furnished with displays showing what it would have looked like at different times in the history of the castle.
It was initially built as a fortress,
knocked down, rebuilt, and eventually made into a residential castle many years later.
We also saw another castle (which they called the "ruins" but it looked pretty okay to me...) on another hill, which is apparently on a large private estate, so we couldn't visit it. It looked like something out of a fairytale though.
After this we set off to the Palace at Annevoie. Danny had a fantastic time driving through the small country winding roads, even though we were both slightly freaked out about the strangeness of driving on the wrong side of the road, and feeling like we were sitting in the wrong seats.
We arrived and ate quite a fancy lunch in a beautiful restaurant overlooking part of the gardens. It was amazing. I think it was the best view I have ever seen.
Danny was smart and ordered chicken leg with chips and some weird gravy thing... I made the mistake of ordering ham and melons. Weird mixture, I know, but I wasn't thinking straight due to the beauty of the gardens!
The ham was more cooked than the raw beef (that still haunts me) but not as cooked as we would expect
ham to be in Australia. I was slightly freaked out by it, and even more freaked out when I tasted the melon, but it was mostly enjoyable, and I actually started to like the ham.
We finished lunch and headed out to walk through the gardens.
The gardens have over 48 hectares of park land, 4 springs, 50 water features, 200 year old trees, and have had 250 years of continuous water flow through the fountains, all of which run off the pressure and flow of the springs, and don't actually use machinery at all.
I have to say, I think that the Annevoie Gardens are my favourite place in the world. The photos don't come close to doing it justice (Danny's might, he is much better than me at taking them, and his camera is quite a lot better than mine!). It felt like we were completely disconnected from the world. I think if I sat there for a little while without moving then things would start to move on their own around me, and it would just create it's own little hidden world. It is definitely a place that sparks the imagination!
I would highly recommend
it to anyone who travels to this part of the world. It was very easy to get to, and only about an hour out of Brussels. I would love to go back there and just live there for a while, it seems like it would be so relaxing. I think I could read for days on end without stopping sitting in those gardens.
As we were looking through the gift shop, the guy working there recommended a place about a ten minute drive away where there is a monastery with monks who brew beer. Of course, Danny couldn't resist this idea, so we drove until we found it, and he very excitedly purchased his monk-beer.
It turns out that Belgians must have some kind of super liver system as their beer is much stronger than Australian beer. The "normal" beer (he bought a sampler pack with 3 different kinds of beer in it) is about double our strength, then there is a darker beer which is stronger again, and then one they call a triple. He didn't even try to drink the triple (and, by the way, he didn't drink any of it until we had dropped the car
off at the airport and gotten back to the hotel!!)
By the time we got back it was fairly late, we had dinner at the airport as we were very hungry, and went shopping for snacks at the supermarket before coming back to the hotel.
A very good day! Manford had a great time, although it was very cold so he hid a lot to shield from the wind. Also, he insists that he did see a little brown rectangle shaped princess and he rescued her and she is waiting for him in Australia, but since I didn't notice him leaving my pocket (except for a few photo ops!) I don't know how he could have possibly done this and suspect he may be lying to protect his pride.
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Erin Corkery
non-member comment
Delicious
Hey Skye, I've been reading your blog and it's making me really want to go back to Europe. The photos from Annevoie are delicious. When we went over the trees were all bare as they are there now. We got some comments from people saying how lovely places would look when spring was in full swing (and luckily we were over there for 4.5 months so we did get to see the changes in season) but I actually really liked the bare tree look. Probably because most of our trees in Australia are evergreen... or rather ever-grey-brown-green. Anyway, keep up the good work and have a blast. Don't feel bad about taking a day or half a day off to just relax and gather yourselves. Some of my best memories of Europe are the ones when we just halted the sight seeing and chilled out like the locals. Cheers.