Belgium, day 5 - Liege/Brussels (14 Nov)

Packed up all our gear and checked out of the hotel. Grey day today. We bused up to the residence, and started catching up on the washing. Mainly James of course, but I took advantage of the opportunity too.

James at the residence.

We've been carefully saving all of Euro 50 cent pieces for this endeavour, we loaded the washing, set it going, and retreated to James' room. He did some work, I tided a bit (or according to him, hid his stuff), sorted my photos, spent too much time on Google+, and drank hot chocolate from the vending machine.

After we managed to get all the wet stuff dry, or mostly dry, we bused back down the hill to the station and caught the train to Brussels at 16:00. Only about an hours trip.

It was raining when we arrived, so we hauled out our rain jackets, pulled out my hiking pack's rain cover (I tell you, I'm liking this bag more and more!), and walked the wet, cold, and dark 1.5km to Hotel Sabine. Think the wet, dark, and lack of familiarity made the walk seem far longer than it really was, but we made it! 

We were fairly bedraggled when we arrived, but the warm, comfy room more than improved our spirits. The location is great for walking everywhere, the price good, and the room comfortable and spotless.

We settled in a bit and then headed out to treat ourselves to dinner. The rain made us reluctant to go too far, so we went to the Beer Circus. It's close to the hotel, on the pricey side for us, but has great reviews. We started in the bar and sampled some of the their 150 odd beers, before moving to the eating area.

I started with a Kameleon Amber and James a De la Senne Stouterik. Very much enjoyed the crispness of my beer since I often find the Belgian beers a bit on the sweet side.

Round two was a La Hervoise for me and a Liefmans Goudenband (very pretty wrapper!) for James. The slight sourness of the Liefmans (a trademark of the Lambic beers) really worked for me. Much better than the very sour beers I tried in Italy last year. My beer is made using pear syrup, the pear taste leans for to the sour than sweet, and there's a slight caramel taste. Good.

In the eating area I ordered sausage, bacon and "stoemp", James had meatloaf with apple and raisin, and "stoemp". Stoemp is a mash mixture of carrot, potato and leeks, and I'm pretty certain must be the origin of our Afrikaans "boereboentjies" and "boerewortels". It's yummy! My meal was excellent, but I think the meatloaf  James ordered was fantastic. Will have to go recipe hunting!

I finished off with some proper Trappist Achel 8 Bruin from Brouwerij der Sint-Benedictusabdij de Achelse Kluis, or Achel for short. Trappist beer is brewed by the Trappist monasteries, of which there are only ten in the world, six of which are in Belgium. James had a Buffalo Belgian Bitter. With the sweetness of the Achel and the intense bitter of the Buffalo, we found the beers actually complemented each other quite well, so we went half and half.

After consoling ourselves over the bill by reminding ourselves that we haven't done anything for our anniversary this year yet, we headed back to our new base.