Hunt for Westvleteren

 

Skype	$35
Breakfast (for 3)	€22
Lunch	€11
Snack @ Cafe	€8
Train to Brussels	€75

 

Woke up. Today is August 5, which is one of the days you can call Westvleteren to reserve a crate of the 12. I paid for Skype-Out Unlimited World ($14 for the month), Skype-In (since Westvleteren requires a phone number; $18 for 3 months, which was the minimum) and some Skype Credit for good measure.

Then I called for two hours on Skype, using the hotel wireless, and didn't get through. Sad.

Discouraged we had lunch and Duvel at a cafe near the train station, and apple pie and more weed in another cafe. Apparently, the word "panini" really just means "sandwich"; in the US it refers to a grilled sandwich, but these were cold.

 

Brussels

 

 

 

Hotel (2 nights, for 3)	$265
Beer @ Brewpub Grand Place (for 3)	€15
Dinner @ Chez Leon (for 3)	€35
Delirium Bar	€4

 

We booked a really nice hotel for 2 nights in the center of Brussels. We left our stuff there and went to explore the city. Found a brewpub at the Grand Place (the huge central park area), and had some pretty good local brew. We had dinner at one of the many touristy restaurants which offered a €12 menu deal -- I had pretty tasty mussels -- and headed to Delirium Bar.

Delirium Bar is a three-story bar in the heart of the restaurant area in Brussels. The basement bar claims to stock 2000 different beers; it was very full and we didn't see their menu so we couldn't verify. The ground floor, which is where we went, had about 25 taps of (mostly) excellent Belgian beer. We didn't see what was on the top floor. The Delirium Bar seems to be owned by Brouwerij Huyghe, which is the company who makes Delirium Tremens and a wide selection of other popular Belgian beers. They're a staple of Belgium, their beers are easy to come by and some of them are quite good.

 

Duvel	Strong Golden Ale	Presented beautifully in a huge glass which is only half full of beer -- the other half is head. This is a great, smooth-drinking ale which you can find in pretty much every cafe.
Brasserie Grand Place	Tripel	Good tripel, nothing earth-shattering.
Brasserie Grand Place	Strong Dark Ale	We liked this a lot.
Delirium Nocturnum	Strong Dark Ale	Not a bad beer.
Duchesse de Bourgogne	Flemish Red	This is good in the US in bottles, but on draft it was absolutely lovely.
Dupont Moinette Brune	Strong Dark Ale	Unfortunately I don't like this one very much. Sometimes Dupont really does it for me, but this is not one of my favorites.

 

Someone handed us a flyer for the Brussels Bar Crawl. I noticed they were ordering a lot of one particular light beer, "Campus". Hmm. I wonder how they are marketing that beer! Kept the flyer for later.