September 1, 2023
Day 6: Flemalle to Namur
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We are building up an image of Belgium as a fairly gritty, working class sort of nation. This is being driven by all the cement, gravel, recycling, and refinery industry along the river, and by the rundown appearance of most of the brick house and factory construction. But of course generalisations always have many exceptions, and also once you have put a certain lens on your observations, what you are actually seeing may be biased or coloured.
With this in the background, I had a second look at our restaurant/ hotel. It actually looks pretty nice!
Looking from the other side of the river, here is what we see:
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Today was basically a rainy day, sometimes with showers and sometimes with a quite heavy downpour. This limits the number of photos we can take, but otherwise is no problem because our rain gear is really good and temperatures are still quite warm. Today, for instance, started at 16 degrees and later (when the rain also stopped) went up to 25.
Because the route we were cycling the past two days was not part of our initial planning for this trip, we did not glom on to the fact that EV3 was the centre piece of going from Aachen to Namur. EV3, the Pilgrim's Route, extends 5300 km from Trondheim in Norway to Santiago de Compostella. The main thing about it for us right here is that its signage is perfect and that the way is entirely paved. And today, it was almost entirely right on the bank of the Meuse. This quality route really made everything easier, especially in the rain.
About halfway along we came to the town of Huy. There was not so much of interest there, except for trying to guess at how the name might be pronounced. Have a look below at the compact commercial core, and decide if it is quaint or gritty.
Here are some more examples of quaint vs gritty. Undoubtedly the stone chateau is quaint, and the old brick factory - not so much?
With only a modest amount of fighting with traffic, we arrived at the centre of Namur. Most of it is car free, or at least has few cars, and is composed of brick 3-4 story buildings housing an array of interesting shops and cafes. From some tourist literature we knew that eglise St. Loup and the cathedral were main attractions. These were on the way to our hotel opposite the train station, so we naturally stopped for a look.
The signage says that the church of St Loup is a fine example of baroque architecture. That could be accurate, but we could only snap the interior through a glass door, since the church was locked up. They were playing organ music to the foyer with the locked door, so that was nice. They apparently have a quality, recently restored organ.
A second major attraction was the cathedral. We found this to be a cavernous building, slightly dusty feeling, with litter on its front steps and fronted by a quite busy parking lot. To be fair, it did have very nice marble walls and beautifully carved pulpit and choir, bit we soon moved on, looking for other thrills.
Our hotel is by the train station, and is in an area with the most crowds of people. We noticed that on average these were quite young, and speculated on there being a university nearby. Perhaps the town just has a lot of twenty something year olds.
We took the unusual step of leaving our hotel room, once we were installed in it, this time for the special project of researching Belgian fries. We tried to follow the directions of the hotel clerk to find an authentic place, but got lost. Instead we chose a random, though local, burger and fries outlet and gave them a try. The result was good, alright, but we could not be sure that these were the "real thing". We'll wait until Brussels, and give it a more serious try. We also found a couple of stands with waffles on the sidewalk, but again, decided to wait to seriously try this local specialty as well.
This is the point at which we leave the Meuse, which has flowed toward us, from the Ardennes northward to the North Sea. We ourselves will head northwest, toward Brussels, and I have no idea what type of path, or route lies before us. The most alluring adventure right now is the bed that sits behind me in this room. Dodie is already in there, and we are so tired, it's going to be a great rest!
Today's ride: 61 km (38 miles)
Total: 133 km (83 miles)
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