Dinant, Belgium {October 31}

For a couple of months, I kept seeing the same ad in my facebook feed for Dinant, Belgium. It was an amazingly beautiful picture and I kept thinking we should go there. I finally looked it up and it was only 1.5 hours away, and Tasha and I were talking about it one day and realized we had both been longing to go to Dinant. Tasha is a much better planner than I am, she had already found kid-friendly ways to explore the city and put together a potential itinerary. A group of 6 of our families gathered at 9am on Saturday morning (which happened to be Halloween) and caravanned to Dinant, where we drove through Rocher Bayard (a giant, impressive rock formation that was the farthest western reach of the German military during the World War II Ardennes Offensive).

We parked downtown and I had planned to hike up the 408 stairs to the citadel at the top of the cliff rather than taking the cable car ride, to save money. When we got there, we found out it was the same price whether we took the stairs or the cable car. We went for the cable car.

the stairs; Ryan and Otto on the cable car

  

the view of the cathedral, citadel, and cable car from the top; and I had the brilliant idea to blind our family by taking a picture in front of this amazing wall.

 

Once at the top, we explored the Citadel and tried to keep the kids occupied while we learned of the Citadel’s role in the city’s attempts to defend itself during World War I (Charles de Gaulle was wounded there, and Saxon troups of the German Army executed a large number of the city’s inhabitants). The kids explored the cannons and ran around in the courtyard before we showed them the playground. It was a beautiful, sunny fall day, and we spent a long time playing, talking, and eating our picnic lunch at the playground in the Citadel.

 

   

When we had tired out the kids and exhausted our supply of food, we took the cable car back down and walked over the bridge, across the river, to see the view looking back. We stopped about halfway across the bridge and took some pictures, but I forced our crew to keep going, knowing that this wasn’t the vantage point I had seen in the Dinant ad. I was glad we pressed forward – the view from the far side of the river was amazing.

When we were done bribing our kids to say cheese, we headed back towards the cars. Tasha and I snuck off in search of Christmas ornaments (no luck) before we drove out of town. It was a great day trip – warm sun, a playground and friends for the kids, and a beautiful city and friends for us.