One of the first beers I ever drank that wasn’t a boring lager was a blue Chimay. A nerdy factoid I learned while drinking it, is that it’s a special type of beer known as Trappist, which is brewed by monks and is only made in six monasteries in Belgium. Years later my wife’s friend Naomi got a Belgian boyfriend and over the years we’ve often talked about visiting him and going on a tour to the Trappist monasteries. As we were planning this year’s trip back to Sweden, we figured it was about time to make something of those old plans. Said and done, we added a detour to Belgium into our summer trip schedule.

Packing the important things

After a long flight we were too tired to go galavanting about between various monasteries, so we spent the first day relaxing at our friends’ house. It was very nice to just hang out with them and take things easy.

Relaxing after a long flight
Got to explore our friends’ house a bit
Check it out, they even have a trampoline in the garden.
.Going out for a walk to stave off the jetlag
Tantan did a great job walking by himself
After the walk we all deserved some icecream

Playing in the town square fountain after dinner

Aerial view of the town square
Drone selfie
While Tantan was playing in the fountain I got the drone out

The second day Naomi drove us out to the Abby at Val-Dieu. It was a warm sunny day it and was really pleasant to stroll around for a while in the grounds, then sit down to taste a couple of beers. The beer by the way, was excellent, I can highly recommend it; I even bought a bottle to bring back home.

Aerial view of the Val-Dieu monastery
Enjoying lunch at Val-Dieu

Naomi and Tantan invented a new game called Kicking Dry Grass

Enormous tree

Another aerial view for good measure
Tantan was slightly tired so he got to ride on my shoulders for a bit
Found some cozy woods to stroll through
Tantan found a good stick
Beautiful little path
Weeee
The world’s coolest little boy

Having spent a couple of hours at Val-Dieu we started heading home. However, Naomi suggested we make a little detour to a transparent church called Doorkijkkerk. I had no idea what a transparent church might look like, but I sort of a expected it to be mostly built with glass. When we arrived there I quickly realized it was completely different than anything I could have expected. I guess it’s not really a church but rather a sort of art installation in the shape of a church. I think it’s cool and well worth stopping by if you’re in the area.

The see through church

Some different angles of Doorkijkkerk

Our third day we drove all the way to one of the monasteries that produce Trappist, only to find that it’s closed on Mondays and, being in full vacation mode already, we had forgotten that it was in fact Monday. Fearing that the other monasteries would also be closed, and not knowing where else to go, we did something almost comically European: we crossed the border into Holland for some lunch. Not only were the Dutch pancakes very tasty, we also figured out where to go. After lunch we headed south to Bokrijk Open Air Museum. As the name suggests, it’s an open air museum where they display a number of old buildings including several farm houses and a characteristic windmill. It’s all very picturesque but I think it’s nicer when the old buildings are still in use in their original location, rather than in a park like this. Next to the museum there’s also a huge playground which Tantan enjoyed immensely.

Delicious pancakes for lunch
  • Entering Bokrijk
  • Old style windmill
  • Windmill from a different angle
  • Watermill
  • Taking a closer look at the water wheel
  • Tantan enjoys looking at animals
  • More animals
  • Checking in on the chickens
  • Colorful
  • Lovely little farm house
  • Picturesque little church
I like the way they have an entire log at the top of the fence
We got to make our own rope

On our last day we headed back to the monastery at Achel that had been closed the day before. This time it was open. A funny/nerdy factoid about Achel is that they used to produce Trappist beer. However, one of the requirements for being able to call a beer “Trappist” is that at least one monk has to be responsible for some part of the brewing process, and the last monk at Achel moved to another monastery. Therefore, though nothing about the beer has changed, they no longer produce Trappist. Anyway, I of course had to sample this non-trappist and it was as good as I expected. Except for buying beer we also took a short walk in the forest right outside the monastery which was very cozy. A funny thing is that the monastery is only about 50 meters from the border with the Netherlands, so we ended up crossing an international border on our afternoon stroll.

Tantan in the monastery garden
Enjoying a beer while Tantan plays with his cars
I love this old beer delivery cart
The border between Belgium and the Netherlands

Interesting to note that there are some remnants of a WWI electric fence right at the boarder
Sometimes I can’t help but strike a silly pose
Let’s have a couple extra border photos for good measure
One more because Tantan looks so cool in his sunglasses

Entering the forest
Sitting down to contemplate the stillness
When you’re walking in the woods you always need a good stick
Beautiful light and beautiful wife

We still had some time to kill before our flight to Sweden so we went to a farm not too far away for some homemade icecream. Luckily they had a playground so Tantan could spend some energy before the flight.

The little farm/icecream cafe, right by the canal
mmmm icecream
A final view of the canal.

I think it was a nice trip and Belgium was much more fun than I could remember from when I was a kid. I just wish I had more time to visit a few more monasteries and try their beer. A final note, even though we did rather grown-up things like visiting monasteries and tasting beer, we always found ways for Tantan to enjoy the experience, like finding raspberries for him to eat or giving him time to play with his cars, and so on; as far as I can tell it seems to have worked.