This post is a day late because last night we were unable to access wifi. As I mentioned yesterday when we arrived at what we expected to be a quiet campground in a quiet part of Belgium we found the place teeming with people because of a 4 day weekend. Our plan was to use the campground as the base to take day trips in the area. So we took our first day trip to the cute town of Durbuy and we returned to find that what we thought was a full campground could get even fuller. My guess was that there were close to 3000 people on the campsite. As a result the local cell tower was overwhelmed and we could not get enough bandwidth to open any programs or apps on the internet. So instead we settled in and watched the commotion around us with a little bit of annoyance.
But enough complaining. Ton had starred three towns that she wanted to visit in her list of Belgian towns so today we headed off to Durbuy. It was a short drive of about 50 kilometers from the campground, but this time Google decided to test my driving skills by sending us over the top of a mountain on 11/2 lane roads. To increase the driving test Belgians and Dutch on holiday like to ride bikes around the mountains so we had to deal with passing bicyclists safely on these narrow roads.
After about an hour we arrived in Durbuy and it is every bit as pretty as its reputation. It is also located on the L’Oisle River with cliffs on both sides that give it a rugged beauty.
The town itself is not large and you can walk thru the entire town twice in about 90 minutes as we did. It is totally devoted to tourism these days but it is one of those towns that gets tourism right. They had a nice mix of upscale artists galleries and designer clothes with places to get your magnet or whatever souvenir of choice you collect. The store fronts are dignified so you do not feel like you are in a tourist trap.
There were multiple restaurants to pick from again covering the gamut from Michelin to Kebab shops. We decided we only wanted a beer and a cup of hot chocolate. I added a plate of fries to the order to give us something to snack on. The beer and chocolate were normal sized but the plate of fries was immense, much more than a snack. They do like fries here and the Belgians claim they are the inventor of the French Fry, not the French.
Our drive back was much quicker as google decided us to keep us on the main road running along the river all of the way which saved us about 20 minutes of driving and 100 or more gear shifts.
