A Belgian Chateau and lots of Sax

No, this is not a typo. Today (Wed. Dec. 30) we actually went to the town of Dinant where the man who invented the saxophone was born. His name was Adolfe Sax.

Claire's host family was kind enough to take us on un petite road trip. First we passed through Dinant and went a little further south (and just a few miles from France) to a beautiful chateau named Freyr sur Meuse. We toured the whole house and grounds and it was very interesting and beautiful. At one end of the garden they have two buildings called orangeries where they house the orange trees for the winter. The orange trees are moved into the orangeries at the first sign of frost to keep them alive. The funny thing was, however, that it was colder in the orangeries than outside. ..a lot colder. We all felt the same thing so it must be true. They must know what they're doing though because the orange trees are over 350 years old.

After touring the chateau we stopped in Dinant. What a charming little town. It was getting dark so we weren't able to take many pictures but along the street name "Rue to Sax", above the road were lights in the shape of saxophones, and then of course, a monument in Adolfe Sax's honor. We all had to have our pics taken with the giant saxophone. (Yes, we are unabashed American tourists.)

We also were able to visit the cathedral in Dinant named La Collegiale Notre-Dame, one of the most important gothic monuments in Belgium. This place is huge and like most important religious works of art it's history dates back thousands of years. During the course of it's existence it's been flooded, and burned and bombed and remodeled and burned again and ransacked, etc, etc. Visiting a place like this is always a humbling experience.

We walked around Dinant for a little while more and then went back to our hotel for a nice dinner "en famile" w/ Claire's Belgian family. The food was excellent but it took 3 1/2 hours to complete our dinner. Diddier (Claire's "dad" said that it was slow even by Belgian standards.

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and we're invited to a party at Claire's house and we're really looking forward to it.

A demain.

P.S. Earlier in the day while we were window shopping through town we were informed that Saturday, Jan. 2 is the Belgian equivalent of "the day after Christmas" for sales. In all the shops the clerks were marking down merchandise like crazy and in fact had huge areas blocked off w/ crime-scene-like tape. Apparently all the stores open at 9:00 am that day. Guess where we'll be at 9:00 am on Saturday?