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.
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…