Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Jul 21, 2010

I spent the early part of the day going to Wal*Mart, Target and Dick's looking for items I needed for the backpacking trip. I found most everything I needed and gathered everything together at home so it would be ready to pack. I always need to go over my list of items a bunch of times until I'm satisfied I've got everything.

I picked up Chuck a bit later and went to The Abbaye to celebrate Belgian Independence Day. This is what we learned about it. It wasn't as crowded as I would have expected but we got a table and our first Belgian beer of the night.

The second time he came around our server was wearing an interesting hat. After inquiring about it we were offered our very own with the condition that we wear them.. of course we'll wear them!

Chuck and I both had the Maredsous 8 and really enjoyed it. The Belgian know what they're doing when it comes to beer. We each tried several other beers, each of which were quite good, but the Maredsous won best of the night in my opinion.

We were having good conversation and we had talked to the beer rep that was giving out raffle tickets for prizes. We each got a ticket for our hats and each ended up really nice glasses from the beer company. Good thing we wore the hats because otherwise we'd need to know why monks originally made beer in the monastery.. or other "easy" questions.

We were told that we might get a free beer out of our hats early in the evening so when it had gotten late and we were still paying for everything I decided to inquire. Instead of beer we were given shots of chocolate vodka with a chocolate covered cherry chaser. That's fun to say. It was pretty good and the cherry was delicious.

Once we had each had our fill of beer and I had a few glasses of water, we got out of there. But not before being asked to pose for a second photo for the website, or so she said. I haven't been able to find us.

I considered my bad decision once I got home since we planned to leave pretty early for our hike.. but I drank some water and got to sleep, hoping for the best.

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