Dinant, Belgium and Champagne, France (26 - 28 November 2010)

Back in August Kristina, Katie, and I set out on a 16-day road trip aiming to take in nine countries, including and surrounding Germany. One of those countries was Belgium, specifically the wee town of Dinant just north of the French border with the aim of visiting the original brewing abbey of Leffe. Plans changed however and that idea had to be scrapped. Be that as it may I still wanted to come here, and so as this is Kristina's last weekend in Europe before she flies home to Texas next week, we decided to make a weekend road trip out of it and take in some of the Champagne region of France while we were at it (yup, where the sparkling white wine comes from). Groovy.

We left Paris on Friday night amid forecasts of snow and sub-zero temperatures, and before long, snow it did.		Three hours later we arrived in Dinant on the River Meuse. No snow here but lots of large model saxophones lining the bridge over the river and saxophone-shaped lighting along the main drag - interesting.

We headed straight for best cafe in town :) A little bit about Leffe then since it was kind of the point of the whole trip: Leffe is a Belgian beer (obviously) first brewed around 1200 in the abbey Notre Dame de Leffe in Dinant. There are several beers in the Leffe range (the two above are a special Christmas brew), ranging in strength from 6.5% up to 9% (as are most Belgian beers; the Belgians like ‘em strong!).

Dinant by day, overlooked by the citadel atop the cliff, and the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame.

And here's those saxophones I mentioned. We found out Dinant hosted a saxophone competition earlier this month, with saxophonists from several nationalities taking part. Each saxophone on the bridge here represents a particular country. I especially liked the German one on the right there with “The Germans Always Win” splattered all over it; clearly they've already forgotten about WWII.

Dinant is home to around 13,000 Leffe-lovers, and it's a bloody nice wee spot! There are speakers affixed to buildings lining one of the main roads through town playing everything from classical to reggae hehe, nice.

Love thy Leffe.		In the US you have the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, in Belgium you have the Beer Route hahaha!		Abbaye Notre-Dame de Leffe.

Closed for winter - bugger! In the 1950s, production of Leffe was discontinued at the abbey and instead moved to a commercial brewery elsewhere in Belgium that was able to meet demand. Royalties are still paid to the abbey, so I imagine it's doing pretty bloody well and really doesn't need the tourist dollar, especially in the off-season.		Photo stolen from Google Images of the interior of the abbey.		It turns out the abbey is only open from May to August, and if we were to have come here during the German road trip it would have been closed then too. Oh well. So we wandered back into town...

...and back to the Leffe Cafe for lunch and some more of the golden nectar!

Quick nosey in the church - big and impressive like they all are in Europe, and this one has a bloody amazing stained glass window!

From there it was a steep climb up the 400-something steps to the citadel (we could have taken the free cable car up, but where's the fun in that?)		The (cold) views from the top.

We joined a tour that just happened to be starting as we got up there and got taken through the history of Dinant and the citadel, and through a room that shifted and tilted 30 degrees in its entirety from a bomb attack way back when.

Saturday night and we took a short drive to Celles, a village just outside of Dinant for dinner. True to form I order the most random thing I could find on the menu, which tonight turned out to be a massive leg of pig hahaha - awesome! It was enough to feed a small Kenyan village for a week (or me for a night).

It was a bit brisky out when I took these shots (Kristina was happy to wait in the car).

Sunday wasn't much warmer when we set out bright and early for a day of Champagne.

Champagne is a province in the northeast of France, now best known for the sparkling white stuff that bears its name. Our first stop was the town of Rocroi, also a target for the German road trip which was dropped with Dinant. The centre was a fortified city, the walls of which are in the shape of a stylised star. I've stolen another photo from Google Images to give you a better idea than I can on the ground.				Between Dinant and here it had snowed quite heavily overnight. Kristina lost the snow fight ;)

The centre of town - hard to do it justice with winter photos.		All roads lead to the wall.

After a snowy drive we arrived in Charleville-Mézières, a city also on the River Meuse. According to my GPS, the top 15 main attractions here included a dozen cemeteries, so we didn't bother and drove on instead to Sedan.

Today Sedan is known for its castle - Château de Sedan, dating from around 1424 which is claimed to be the largest fortified medieval castle in Europe with a total area of 30,000-square-metres on seven levels. Another summer shot below shamelessly stolen from Google Images.

Our final stop before returning to Paris was the city of Reims, regarded as the capital of the province of Champagne. It's home to around 200,000 Champagne lovers, has a lot of history to it, and functions as one of the centres of champagne production. Champagne ages in the many caves and tunnels under Reims, which form a sort of maze below the city with some of the passages dating back to Roman times.

Notre Dame de Reims, looking very similar to Notre Dame de Paris.		We found the city's Christmas markets and wandered around to find some sausage, only to be horrified that there was none! How can you have a Christmas market without German sausage?!

So that was our weekend getaway, completely centred around alcohol basically hehe. Having to visit these wee places in winter is unfortunate given nothing looks as good as it would in the summer months, but never mind - at least in these parts you can just get drunk :)

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