Woke up to a rather moist Saturday morning. After the last few weekends of errands and residency issues, we decided to take a sightseeing trip to Namur. Namur is a centrally located city about 40 minutes from Brussels. One of the things that strike me about Belgium is how compact it is. In two hours of driving, you can hit three countries and three different linguistic regions. We weren't that ambitious today however, so we only crossed two linguistic zones and drove 30 minutes.
We arrived in Namur in about 30 minutes and quickly found some on street parking. 3 euro for 4 hours! Bargain. We wandered about for a little while trying to orient ourselves and wound up finding a large Saturday Market. One of the great things about Belgium are the markets. Our town has one every Friday but it was much smaller than this one. They had everything from Bolts of fabric to whole pigs heads. (MMMMM Pigs Head). The smell of these markets is amazing because the stalls alternate between raw veggies and meats to cooked meals ready to go. There is everything you could imagine and probably a few things that you cant. My favorites are always the butcher carts and Charcuterie. Really an amazing quantity and quality of food. Currently it is the Chasse, which is game season, so in addition to the usual cow, pig, horse, duck, chicken selection, there is also a whole variety of game birds, wild boar and venison.
After the market, we decided to not scale the Citadel of Namur due to the rainy conditions and amount of leaves on the trail. We will save that for a spring trip out to Namur. It looks very impressive however, so we will definitely be back in better weather. We grabbed a leisurely lunch of steak frites and killed the rest of the afternoon enjoying the old city.
On the way home we stopped at the grocery to buy meals for the rest of the weekend. While there we purchased a Watou Tripel. This beer is lower in alcohol than many of the tripels that I have had at just 7.7%. It pours a nice amber color with a bit of cloudiness. In many ways it is very similar to the Leffe Tripel. Creamy mouthfeel, nice hop flavor and crisp finish. For me, the lower alcohol level is the key for this beer. It is a good balanced beer. It is not overly complex, but not bad at all. Two and a half drunk monks.
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