Heading Overseas

In hindsight, perhaps a bit more planning would have been a good idea, but George has always sworn by the “winging it” method of travel, so I thought I’d give it a shot, too. I did at least look up a hotel address (although I didn’t book it in advance) because we needed something to program into the GPS. I figured that would get us into the city; we could just go from there once we arrived.

We got up early Saturday (about 8:00) for the 2 hour 40 minute drive. We stopped at the backerei down the street for breakfast, then hit the road at about 9:20, with me driving since we still need to get George’s international driving permit. We had an uneventful drive north-northwest through Germany, then crossed over into Belgium near St. Vith (where there’s a big furniture store we still need to visit…). The drive through the eastern part of Belgium was fine, too.

Then we arrived on the edge of Liege. And our GPS (which we named Simone) gave out. Her scrolling map image froze, and her voice started to break up, stutter, and fail. We were passing some high-tension powerlines at the time, so we thought that was causing it. But she was still failing when we passed that section, so we pulled over and fully rebooted her. It looked like she was going to be okay then, when she came back online, but soon the same thing happened. She just wasn’t able to keep up with our actual location, and her voice was having the same trouble. We drove around Liege for about 15 minutes, repeatedly passing a large carnival, before I got completely frustrated and pulled over again, parking the car up on the curb (behind another car already parked there, so I thought I’d be okay doing it, too). There was a bar on the corner, and we both needed a drink.

We went into the bar, used the bathroom, then ordered two Stella Artois and drank those while we tried to de-stress. After the beer, I finally worked out some French in my head, got the bartender’s attention, handed her the paper with the name and address of the hotel we’d been trying to find, and said, “Je cherche pour cette hotel.” (I search for this hotel.) She read it, then pointed up the side street we were on, and said (in French) to go up to the next street and turn left, and the hotel was right there. Then she pointed to a large, bright sign on the building directly across the street. It said Hotel, with an arrow up the street, and had a large silver swan on it. The hotel we were looking for was Le Cygne d’Argent, The Silver Swan. George and I just had to laugh. Simone had actually managed to get us there, after all, even with all the trouble she’d been having. We paid our tab and walked up around the corner to see if the hotel actually had any vacancies, fingers crossed.

The very last room they had was actually a studio apartment in a separate building. It was a bit more expensive than a regular double room would have been, but not much, so we took it. We also managed to snag a free parking spot owned by the hotel, so that saved us parking fees. The studio was really quite cool, with a kitchenette (we didn’t use it, only staying one night) and a tight, spiral staircase leading up to the loft bedroom. There’s some pics of the place below.

We dropped our bags off in the room and headed out to see Liege. We also needed some food, since it was, I believe, after 1:00 at that point. There was a park at the end of our side street that we could see from the door of our building, so we went up there first, Canon in tow. George got some pretty great pics between Saturday and Sunday, some of the best of which are below. We took some pics in the park (which was in front of the Jardin Botanique (the Botanical Garden), then walked farther on.

We found a cafe and went in. We didn’t actually order food, but George had a Chimay Rouge and I had a Framboise. There were two places of which I knew in Columbus where one could get a Framboise. None in Germany that I’ve seen. I was in heaven. We were sitting there, enjoying our respective Belgian alcohols, when George looked past me and gestured and said “No” to someone there. I started to look around, and suddenly a hand was putting keys and something else down on the table in front of me. I was totally confused, but after the guy left (our waitress also ran him off), George explained that he was going to try to sell us something. It seems that it’s common in Belgium, and other parts of Europe (though not in Germany, from what we’ve seen) for homeless or jobless people to try to sell little trinkets and other junk on the street and at cafes. Good for them for trying to actually earn a bit of money, instead of begging, but it was a bit disconcerting for me to suddenly have someone nearly inside my personal space!

We continued our walk up the street, and eventually could see a very intriguing glass and steel structure ahead. We wondered if perhaps it was a football (soccer) stadium, but it wasn’t until we actually went inside it that we realized it’s the Liege-Guillemins train station. It’s a wonderfully soaring, swooping mass of glass in steel webbing. It’s bright and cheerful on the platform level, even on an overcast day. There are some pics George took below, and the Wikipedia link contains a wider pic of the entire station.

After the station, we walked across the street where there are several tavernes and cafes to get a couple sandwiches and more beer: this time Leffe Blonde, another Belgian brew. The sandwiches were very typically French: a bit of meat inside a half a long baguette. I had jambon (ham), and George had thon (tuna). They were good, on really good bread: simple, and tasty. We continued our random walking tour around Liege, George taking photos wherever he felt inspired. We wandered back through the botanical garden’s park again, and a group of four local teenaged boys noticed the camera. As we crossed a street leaving the park, two of the boys struck a pose together and indicated they wanted George to take their photo. We laughed and he took it: see below.

By this time, the carnival had opened, so we wandered down along the center of it. We could smell sweet, fried dough, but it seems that, unlike in France, the Belgians don’t do plain beignets; they all had some kind of fruit in them. So we never did get any. I just wanted a lump of plain fried dough, rolled in cinnamon and sugar, but it just wasn’t to be.

We walked the length of the festival, then continued on, farther into the Centre de Liege. We finally found a pedestrian area, similar to what’s common in most larger German cities, although this appeared to be only one street. We walked the length of it, then stopped in a pub for some more Chimay and Framboise. It was approaching dinnertime after that, so we picked one of the restaurants in that area for dinner. It was Rive Gauche (Left Bank). All I can say is, avoid it. At all costs. It’s not worth your time, your money, or your patience.

After our very disappointing dining experience, we walked a few doors down to another cafe and had a couple truly excellent cappuccinos out on the sidewalk, in front of a propane heater. We debated, as we sat there, on providing a full blog accounting of dinner, but George convinced me to just leave it at saying that Rive Gauche is a place to avoid.

It was fully dark by this time, so we headed back to the room to drop off the camera, then walked down the block to the taverne that had been so good to us earlier in the afternoon when we had no idea we were so close to our hotel. We got a couple Stellas and relaxed at a table in the back and watched several locals enjoying the football game on TV. We were both yawning, so it was time to head for bed.

Sunday morning we got up at 8:00 again, dressed, then loaded all our stuff in our car and checked out of the hotel, moving our car from the hotel’s parking to a space on the street, and finding to our delight that on-street parking is free on Sundays. Then we went in search of food, since the hotel’s petit dejeuner (breakfast) was €9 per person. We should have paid it. We both forgot that not much is open in Europe on Sundays. But in the end, we did find a taverne that was open, so we each got a cappuccino there, then we walked again with the camera.

We wandered down past the carnival grounds and found a monument on the other side to the Spanish city of Guernica, which was destroyed by German and Italian bombing in 1937. Pablo Picasso painted a large mural about it at the behest of the Spanish Republican government that same year.

We continued on and found the river, the Meuse. On the bank is a monument to all those children of Liege that have died for her in many wars. We crossed the river and thought we were in Outremeuse (Over the Meuse), but as it turned out we were merely on a very large island in the center of the river. There is a beautiful park running along this island, and George had a field day with the camera there. When he finally ran out of space on the memory card, it was time to leave Liege behind and head for home.

We got in the car and started up Simone. She still couldn’t provide us much assistance. We found the E25, which I remembered being on the previous day when we entered Liege, so we decided to just follow it, along the Meuse, until we got out of Liege, and maybe Simone would be able to help then.

After driving along the river for a while, I began to suspect that we’d missed a turn somewhere. We hadn’t been along the river for that long on the way in to Liege. And then we saw signs that we had indeed missed a turn. We’d entered Nederland (The Netherlands). We’d gone about two kilometers into Holland before we turned Simone back on, and she was indeed then able to get us turned around and on the right track back toward Germany. She still had some difficulty on the trip back, though. We asked her to direct us to the nearest McDonald’s at one point, and after her first indication of where to turn, she froze up again, so we wound up stopping at a Texaco station and getting junk food to eat in the car. Our theory is that we were having really poor satellite reception this weekend. I hope that was it, and not a problem with the GPS unit itself. At any rate, the lesson from this is that we need to buy a European road atlas to keep in the car, so we at least have a back-up plan! We also need to do a bit more planning before any more trips like this. I will book a hotel ahead of time, and we will research places we want to see so we’re not just wandering around without a clue. I don’t want every minute of my trip to be planned, but at least knowing what sights and activities are available would be good!

On the whole, we both had a very enjoyable experience in Liege, Belgium, and the time we spent out of the car, in the city, was relaxing!

All pictures below are copyright 2009 George Holroyd.