It's not all beer and skittles

Saturday 25^th June

Well, I’m sitting here warm and dry in our B&B and Rob is at the car races, hopefully at least staying dry. It’s been a quiet day for me, just reading, knitting and editing some photos on the computer.

We left the convent on Thursday morning and after breakfast at the bakery in Sarrebourg (2^nd time), moved northwards towards Longwy via a couple of places marked touristy on the map. The map we were using used castle pictures to designate either military or fortification stuff and the first one turned out to be an American military cemetery. Moving right along. Next stop was a place that had a large bunker complex on the Maginot line in WWI. This would have been quite a good tour – underground about 6km of tunnels in a little train trip – but it was not open till 2.30 and it was only 11am. Skip that one too.

Fort du Hackenburg in the northeast corner of France

These bunkers were on top of the hill above the tunnels. They could see for miles out northeast towards Germany.

We found a lovely little church on the top of the hill where these bunkers are, with spectacular views. There was a guy here mowing the lawns and this was the trailer towed behind the ride-on mower. The seat on the trailer is for his dog.

Time to search for a relais for lunch – that didn’t work either and we found ourselves at the next chateau. Dang – not open till 2pm and it was 1.30 but we decided to wait. This chateau looked pretty impressive as we approached it but inside was a disappointment. They have completely renovated it and turned it into a museum but it has lost all it’s ‘medievalness’ and doesn’t feel real. So Thursday was not all beer and skittles.

Walking along the top of the chateau walls. 

There was an exhibition in the chateau of the Japanese Samurai and its history. It compared the training and purpose of the samurai and the Knights.

Pretty impressive to look at from the outside, but a disappointment on the inside. They could have done so much more with what they had to work with.

Time for Dora to take us to Longwy via fastest route and a village called Rodemack which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful villages in France. It was getting late in the day and we were hungry and there was a lot of activity in Rodemack as they were setting up for a medieval festival this weekend, so we didn’t stop to check it out. Maybe we’ll have a look on the way back south after the festivities. So fastest route to Longwy (France) was France, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Luxembourg , close enough to Belgium to spit, then France.

Rodemack is a fortified city and this is the main entrance on the downhill side of the village. Unfortunately we didn't get a photo of the castle.

Yesterday we travelled from Longwy in France to Francorchamps in Belgium – about 2.5k from the racetrack. Rather than travel straight up the main highway we detoured via a little town called Clervaux in Luxembourg where we spent the night of my birthday when we were here 2 years ago. When we were here in 2014 we just stopped at the hotel and ate dinner there, little knowing that there was a lovely village to be discovered only 1km further on. We stopped there for morning tea and just wandered around centre ville (and I bought some sock wool). It’s the type of village that we really love and it was lovely to sit in the sun and watch the passing parade as we had coffee.

It's been a while since we sat and had a real patisserie morning tea. The eclair has custard and cream and strawberries. The green coconut and chocolate ball is a snowball with a coffee centre - a local speciality.

The church in Clervaux - we didn't go inside but may detour here again on our way back south. Clervaux played a part in WWII as part of the Battle of the Bulge happened in and around the town. 

Just a beautiful looking hotel in the village of Clervaux.

From there we headed to the race track to suss out the spectating plan for today. I’m sure Rob will have found a good spot and found someone to talk to.

Deciding where to eat dinner can sometimes be an issue when we are trying to cut costs. We took a trip into the town/city of Spa last night to check out a few places but they were all a bit on the exxy side – there is a casino in the town and that probably forces the prices up. We headed back to the village of Stavelot where we had seen a place earlier in the day and had dinner there. It was a bit ‘fast foodish’ but was quite nice nonetheless. Seems that Belgium is the home of frites – every second food place is a friterie. 

Another interesting thing we saw in Sarrebourg was a fresh milk dispenser, like a drink machine. It has empty bottles inside it and you select your bottle, insert your money and get a bottle of fresh mild. We have also seen 24hr pizza dispensing machines, We haven't been up to them yet to see exactly how they work but I assume there is a fixed range of pizzas to select from and once selected they 'drop' into the oven and are cooked. Might get desperate enough to try it one night.