Liège and Champagne

Early in the morning, it was already quite busy in the backyard of the beverage trade. We weren't really bothered by that. Before departure, we visited the boss, who appeared shortly afterwards. When asked if we would rather go shopping instead of simply paying 10 euros for the night, we naturally went to his beverage store. In fact, there were over 1400 beer varieties on dozens of shelves, and soon the limit of 1500 would be reached. In total, there are over 3000 beers brewed in Belgium, wow!

We walked through the store together with him and he advised us. He denied the question of whether he knows the story behind every beer and brewery, and I'm still not sure, considering how much he told us... really insane! Just as crazy is that every brewery manufactures their own glasses; he also had all of them available for sale. Once again, we met a person who represents his business with great passion, simply amazing!

Since I had never been to Belgium myself, I wanted to at least visit a city. On the way was Liège or Lüttich. We quickly found a parking space and started the discovery tour. There are really nice areas in Liège, but for the most part, as Della put it, the city looks pretty run down.

In addition to eating the famous Belgian waffles (they were so delicious!), we also had the famous staircase to Montagne de Bueren on our program. Della didn't really understand why we would go up a staircase just to go down again... ;-) I enjoyed the view.

In addition to the waffles, Belgian fries were also on our wish list. We didn't really find anything in Liège, so we continued our journey for now. After getting a bit lost at some street intersection in the middle of nowhere, a so-called friterie appeared, stop and go in. After seeing the display, we should have turned around immediately, but hunger prevailed and rewarded us with a triple burger and a large portion of fries. Doesn't sound like much, but we had no chance of finishing it all!

Belgium didn't really convince us, so we sped on to France. Shortly after crossing the border, I saw a huge wild boar. (Sanglier - we know since our Corsica vacation: "Fait attention, il y a des sanglier" they said... just pretty dumb if you don't know what sanglier are and what you should watch out for at night on a road in the dark...)

However, this wild boar was not dangerous, but simply the largest wild boar in the world, made by the artist Woinic over 11 years from 50 tons of metal and 6.5 tons of welding rods. After completion, it had to be transported 55 kilometers to the Ardennes rest area. It must have taken a while at a speed of 8 km/h.

Somehow, it was quite nice in the area, so we decided to take a short detour to a winemaker in Champagne. We drove for kilometers on the Route Touristique de Champagne through vineyards until we finally arrived at Felix's winery. He started the Champagne tasting with the remaining three couples overnight minutes. We joined in, quickly catching up with the tasting, and I must admit I was a bit overwhelmed with all the French explanations about the tested Champagnes. The deal was product purchase in exchange for a place to stay, and even though we are not champagne drinkers, it was still a very good choice!