A Lot of Waffle About a Belgium Waffle…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

You are turning a page of  my journal detailing our last summer’s travel adventures.

Little did our Singaporean friend “Velvetinenut” know when she landed in the Netherlands, that less than 24 hours later she would be entering a café in Lochristi, Belgium with the intention of ticking one of her wishes off her  wish-list: to try one of Belgium’s famous waffles.

The snack-bar down the road recommended the Semperlo Café as the best chance for a waffle so we duly stepped in the door and when the waitress came to take out order I duly made our request.

Imagine my surprise when I had to translate the answer back to Velvetine: “Sorry there are no waffles until 2.oo p.m. please come back then”.

What?  There’s a time limit for waffles? Seriously?

Indeed seriously… apparently it’s not customary to serve waffles in Belgium before 2.oo p.m. and since we are passing through and it’s only 11.30 a.m.  it appears we are out of luck.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

I’m as stunned as Velvetine is, and the kids are very disappointed too.

They rush back to Himself because their second choice was a sausage from one of the stalls down the street that they’d seen earlier and we wanted to get back onto the road fairly quickly.

Velvetine and I order a warm Hawaii panini sandwich (smoked ham, young cheese and pineapple) to take away with us but it  takes ages to make.

After a very very very long wait we get back to the car as quickly as possible where the others are impatiently waiting.

The kids have spent the waiting time eating their lunch and lamenting loudly the absence of waffles to Himself, who’s as perplexed about the “2.00 p.m. rule” as we are.

Our sandwiches are tasty enough but the taste of disappointment about the waffles lingered.   We need to find the motorway again.. we have an appointment to keep…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Belgium: Finding a Wall of Chickens but No Waffles…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Welcome to my retrospective posts about our Summer adventures.

It’s August 2012 and we’ve just bundled our rather jet-lagged friend  “Velvetinenut”  into our rented van and whisked her to over the border to Belgium… after an hour or two dozing in the back with pillows she’s refreshed and rearing to go and since we made an early start kids everyone is now whineing  expressing wishes for food.

We turn off the motorway and take a few smaller roads but apparently not much is open in Belgium villages on a hot sleepy August morning.

We enjoy the scenery and several villages later find ourselves in the slightly larger town of Lochristi.

In deep contrast to the small villages around it, Lochristi  is a hive of activity and the main reason is soon apparent as we progress down the main street to find market stalls set up on the footpaths.

Himself drops us off so we can browse whilst he finds a parking spot and my kids find themselves dragged past the stalls of  cheap plastic toys by the two fanatical foodie friends who are making a bee-line for the food trailers instead.  (yeah kids, sorry it’s a tough life).

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

There’s a particularly interesting cheese stall and when I ask about local speciality cheeses, I’m surprised at just how many there are.

There’s a good queue of locals (always a good sign) which we join and of course we end up buying a few more cheeses than we intended but they turn out to be fabulous, so worth it.

There”s an amazing rotisserie trailer where an entire side is filled with gently rotating roasting chickens, at the bottom there are golden roasted potatoes that look scrumptious  but we didn’t end up getting any because the queue here by the counter was about ten deep.

I only got a great photo of the rotisserie because it was throwing out a small wall of heat and since the day was already heading for 30C  (86 F)  people were wisely queueing on the “cool” side to the left of the counter. Velvetine said that since Belgium is famous for it’s waffles, and we are here in Belgium she would love to try a waffle if she can.

I ask directions to possible places we might get a waffle and we visit several cafés with no luck, but they are friendly and helpful and write down the name of a place further down the street that they think might have some for us to try. The search for a bona fide fresh Belgium Waffle is on…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Velvetinenut) posted with permission

(photograph © Velvetinenut) posted with permission

(photograph © Velvetinenut) posted with permission

(photograph © Velvetinenut) posted with permission

(photograph © Velvetinenut) posted with permission

(photograph © Velvetinenut) posted with permission