BELGIUM AND LUXEMBOURG — The Way Life Should Be

We can learn a lot about life from the Europeans. They take immense pleasure in good food, good wine, friends, family, music, theatre and history. While we appreciate those things here in North America, over there, it’s different. We always seem to be in a hurry, wanting things now. In Europe, people seem to be much more relaxed. Last June, my 11-year-old daughter and I had the opportunity to experience that joie de vivre first-hand during a trip to Brussels, Flanders and Luxembourg. The trip was as stimulating for me as a parent as it was magical for my daughter. We were with a small group of families, and by the end of it, we were one big family.

For any trip with children, the flight is a big deal. It’s an adventure. I, on the other hand, am a nervous flyer and stressed out during every take-off and landing. The first time I flew with my kids, my 5-year-old was so excited she started clapping in the middle of take-off. As I watched her complete joy, I briefly forgot to be afraid. So when Madi and I took off on American Airlines for Brussels six years later, I was determined not to show my fear. To distract us, (well, me anyway), we looked at our itinerary for the trip. We had all kinds of things lined up, but Madi was focused on one thing: swimming. Her entire focus was on Oceade, a water park outside of Brussels with a subtropical swimming pool, slides and a wave pool. She and I spent so much time talking about it that before I knew it, we were airborne.

We arrived in Brussels on a bright sunny morning and took a brief ride with Fun Cars Taxi from Brussels Airport to Brussels city centre where we checked in at the Novotel Tour Noire. Novotels are fantastic places to stay in Europe with a quality of hospitality and service that is consistent wherever you are. They feature modern rooms with all of the amenities and most importantly, for me, wireless access to keep in touch with my home and office while away.

Feeling a little jet-lagged, we went to Mini Europe. Mini Europe is one of those wacky ideas that actually works. It features miniature built-to-scale buildings of some of the most famous places in Europe, such as the British Houses of Parliament or Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa. For kids, it’s a trip through Europe in a park. While walking through the exhibits, they learn about the European Union and much of the history of the continent. It is unique and surprisingly inspirational.

Right next to Mini Europe was Oceade, and so after a quick lunch, we ventured over. The place is enormous, with a wide selection of pools and slides. One slide in particular, the Anaconda, is to be avoided at all costs. Don’t do it. Jet-lagged and lacking judgment, I naively went up the stairwell to the Anaconda. It is eight stories high and features a vertical drop of about the same with 5 big loops. I am still pulling the thread from my bathing suit out of my teeth. Madi wanted to go twice. We didn’t.

Our next stop was the Atomium, the most famous building in Belgium and home of the 1958 World Fair of Brussels (equivalent to Canada’s Expo ’67 building).

We spent the rest of the afternoon strolling through the beautiful cobblestone streets of Brussels, surely one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. There are Belgian chocolate shops on every corner, beer cafés on every street and a cheeriness about the place that was very comforting. Madi was excited about the buildings and how different they were from back home. She also kept asking me about the bronze statues depicting the little boy peeing that seemed to be in every shop window. That was a good excuse to stop, have a beer, get her an ice cream and tell her the story behind the statue.

We had dinner in a restaurant called Babeko, which was right next to the hotel. We tried the tossed pan-fried scampi in garlic and smoked salmon in a crispy corn wrap and salad followed by the entrecote of grilled beef. Dinner ended with crème brûlée. All in all, it was a great first day.

The next morning, we left for Luxembourg City, a scenic three-hour drive from Brussels. We checked in at Hotel Novotel Luxembourg Centre.

Luxembourg is a multilingual, cosmopolitan and thoroughly modern European city that continues to honour its heritage and culture through the preservation of its historic sites and investments in its many museums, concert halls and theatres.

The old section of the city is classified by UNESCO as a Heritage site. Luxembourg City rests in a valley and was a nexus for conquerors over the centuries. It is truly at the heart of European culture and history. We visited the newly restored Casemates, a network of 23 kilometres of underground galleries carved from the mountainous rocks that surround this part of the city. The Luxembourg fortress represents different influences of European military architecture as it has changed hands many times over the centuries. Italian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Austrian, Dutch and German engineers have all influenced the look of Luxembourg today, and Europeans often refer to parts of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg as “Little Switzerland”. We weaved our way through the caves and the flower-lined historic streets of old Luxembourg, stopping at the Museum café for a mid-afternoon chocolate coffee & ice cream drink. Reenergized, we continued on with our tour guide, who showed us the Grand Duke’s residence, the Grand Ducal Palace, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the city’s Grand Theatre. The tour guide was excellent and kept things interesting for the kids, mixing in bits of trivia with the more formal explanations.

We went for dinner at the Brasserie Guillaume, in the heart of old Luxembourg.We sat outside on a wondrous night and enjoyed the house speciality (scallops and pasta) and a delicious Belgian chocolate waffle dessert. I also tried several of Luxembourg’s wines which are clearly world class. (Unfortunately, because of the LCBO monopoly, we can’t get them in Ontario).

On Canada Day, we took a one-hour train trip to Vianden. (The train station/metro is a short walk from the Novotel in Luxembourg City). Our first stop was Vianden Castle, built between the 11th and 14th centuries on the foundations of an old Roman “castellum”. Until the 15th century, the Castle was the epicentre for many of Europe’s most influential counts. It towers above the city. We took a chairlift to the top and joined a group tour with a very knowledgeable and funny tour guide. The kids loved him. The history of the Castle came to life with his stories about the Byzantine Gallery, the Grand Palace, the Grand Kitchen, the Knights Hall and the Well. I marvelled at the wonderful condition of this historic building and the modern touches that had been added to make it accessible to visitors. The Luxembourg government initiated a stimulus program several years ago (pre-recession) to invest in all of its castles, upgrading them. This had the triple effect of providing work for craftsmen, preserving the heritage nature of the buildings and contributing to increased tourism at these marvellous historic sites (which helped offset the overall costs).

Luxembourg offers special family passes that allow tourists to pay one price to see multiple venues. It’s all very smart. After the Castle tour, we traipsed up the road and here, in the heart of the Ardennes, we went zip lining. I did a few and then decided to spot my daughter, who seemed to take to the zip lines like a monkey to trees. The day kept getting better as we lunched at Oranienburg, located at the foot of the Vianden Castle. Maybe it was the sunny day, the wonderful company or the friendly hosts at the restaurant, but the lunch that day was one of the highlights of the entire trip.

We took the next ninety minutes to walk down the valley back into the town of Vianden and Madi surprised me by wanting to visit the home of the great author Victor Hugo. Vianden was a cherished retreat for Hugo and he lived in the centre of the town right next to the river. Madi knew all about Hugo (way to go Ontario’s public school system!) and she seemed genuinely thrilled to be in his house where he wrote some of his greatest works. We ended the day back in Luxembourg City dining at Restaurant am Tiirmchen. The food was spectacular. We followed dinner with a two-hour stroll through the city, stopping at a café to take it all in.

The next morning in the town of Echternach, we visited the cathedral and then headed off on a guided walk through the lush forests and trails of the Mullerthal-Trail. This region is called Luxembourg’s Little Switzerland and is popular with hikers, campers and people who love the outdoors. We stopped for a picnic lunch before heading back to Brussels on a tour bus.

If I were to make a list of the top ten things to see in Europe with your kids, one of them would definitely be the Ommegang. This annual event in July is a three-hour play that transforms the Grote Market in the centre of Brussels into a huge theatrical procession. Over three thousand actors take part in the play that replicates a feast and party given in the 16th century to honour Charles Quint and his Court. The city sets up bleachers to allow for 10,000 spectators. There are spectacular costumes, lighting and stories. There are jesters, princesses, princes, kings, queens and a wonderful spectacle at the end of the show where 40 men on stilts joust with each other until the last one standing is declared the winner. It is theatre on a grand scale that is entertaining, informative and a whole lot of fun.

A guided tour in Brussels with kids has to include a stop at the Meet Comic Strip Center. Belgium, of course, is the home of the famous Tin Tin comic book series (soon to be a movie by Steven Spielberg). It’s worth staying for lunch at the Comic Center’s restaurant, Brasserie Horta. There is so much to see and do in Brussels, but I suggest you split your time by covering two museums per day and then spending the rest of your day exploring the old city streets. The sights and sounds are fabulous and also help you build an appetite for one of the great speciality meals of Belgium, Moules Frites. The most famous Moules Frites restaurant in Belgium is Chez Léon in Brussels. The restaurant has been in the same family for over a century, knows its mussels and has numerous recipes to serve them up.

The next morning it was off to Bruges, making a stop first in Damme. We took a two-hour guided bike tour along the canals and through little villages, farmland and marshy areas around Damme. It was spectacular. There are hundreds of kilometres of routes. Belgium has a series of bed and breakfasts along this pathway and I am determined to come back with our entire family to spend a week just biking all the paths. It is an incredible recreational and cultural activity. We stopped for a light lunch of chicken stew and dumplings (local dishes), at a local Stampershoeve farm offered by Tourism Damme. This farm also served as a bed and breakfast. We then departed by riverboat from Damme to Bruges.

Bruges was touristy, but it still has a charm of its own. Bruges is sort of like Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings. If you are in Ottawa for the first time, you have to visit the Hill, and if you are in Belgium for the first time, you have to go to Bruges. But it is worth the trip and will not disappoint. We checked in at the Hotel Novotel Centre. The hotel has a great lounging area, an outdoor pool and is situated in the heart of the city. We took a guided tour through Bruges, which included a boat trip through the city’s canals.

The last night of our trip proved to be another highlight for both Madi and me. We attended a medieval dinner (Be a Royal at Bruges Anno 1468) at an old church that had been turned into a dinner theatre. There were several hundred guests in this grand old cathedral, all seated at tables with white linen settings and grand candelabras. Between courses, actors partook in swordfights and gamesmanship, song and magic. At one point, a falconer and his assistant brought in a very large hawk and a very large owl. The birds flew from one end of the Cathedral to the other, barely over the top of the heads of the audience. The kids loved it. I just kept hoping the birds weren’t going to land on my head.

The return home left us with thoughts of the marvellous people we met, the wonderful journey, the great food and the generosity and cheerful demeanour of the people in Belgium and Luxembourg. Even though we were there for a week, it seemed to pass like a weekend. We saw much, but it left us wanting more.

For information on Luxembourg visit, http://www.visitluxembourg.com For information on Brussels and Flanders visit, http://www.visitflanders.us