Arrival Date: 2023-09-10
Departure Date: 2023-09-17
Accommodation: Keizershof Hotel, Aalst
This is our first holiday abroad since we first started seeing each other over twelve years ago except for Ireland, which doesn’t really count because they all speak English and drive on the left.
We set off from home at 9am on Sunday 10th September onto the motorway heading South. We gave ourselves plenty of time, booked on the 16:24 euroshuttle. Turns out we needed that extra time, as on top of the usual traffic around London there was a major incident on the M20 that was causing a ninety minute delay. We took some creative detours, and actually made up some lost time, managing to get an earlier shuttle, arriving in Calais shortly after 4pm UK time, 5pm CET.
The drive on the other side of the channel tunnel was meant to be under two hours, but two hours in we were only half way. We decided to come off the motorway and find somewhere to eat, winding up in a Chinese buffet called Wok Palace near the town of Beernam. The food was delicious but nothing was labelled, not even in Dutch, so we had no idea what we were putting in our mouths.
We finally got to the hotel just before 9pm and basically went straight to bed, tired from the journey.
Monday morning, neither of us wanted to get back in the car, so we spent the day exploring Aalst. It’s a lovely little city, very well maintained, lots of bars and cafes, lots of shops. We had a little milkshake for elevenses while walking around, then stopped at one of the cafes for lunch. I had a croque monsieur, Helen had a croque bolognaise.
We had a long chat with the owner of the chocolate cafe where we had our milkshakes, who was talking to us about the language-divide of the country. He said that in general, most people in the service industry will just speak English because it’s easier for everyone involved. North of Aalst is Dutch-speaking and South of Aalst is French-speaking, so even a lot of people in Aalst will just speak English to each other.
The main square or Grote Markt was really pretty, and we ended up spending a lot of time in the cafes that look out onto it. We also referred to it as the “brothers square”, as there was a cocktail bar called “James” on one side, and a bar called “Steven” on the other!
We had dinner at a Dutch-Belgian burger chain called Ellis, which was really nice as well. I had a burger while Helen had some sizzling pulled-beef stew. Everything was great!
We rounded the evening off with a walk around St Martin’s Church (or Sint-Martinuskerk). I was a bit disappointed that both the church and the Belfort (seen in the picture of the square previously) were closed to tourists during September, but we could at least walk around their exteriors and admire the architecture (the building partitions also had various pieces of art pasted onto them).
Full of food and still tired from yesterday’s travelling, we retired back to our room for a good nights’ sleep. More adventures tomorrow.
Lovely looking town and they’ve even managed to make a burger look posh.
No mention of the hotel, hope it was comfortable.
Oops! It’s a great hotel, very comfortable! Bed is so big it’s like we’re sleeping in separate rooms! Everything is very clean and modern, and they do a full clean of the room every day which is nice.
Shame that things close in September. Brothers Square looks nice and I was hoping for a 360 – never mind! I can only assume that the rest of the square was rubbish (ran out of money!) Would you agree that the Belgians are the best in the world at making chips? Chips & Mayo!