Homeschooling For Him

Aug. 21, 2008

Europe Trip

Another highlight of our trip was a visit to southern Belgium, to the towns of Namur and Dinant. After a quick visit to the war museum in Brussels, we headed south to the Ardennes of Belgium, the french speaking part of the country.

The first day, we went on a rail bike ride outside Dinant. The rail bikes run on an old railroad track. The bikes are actually little wagons/flatbed carts powered to two people using peddle power. There is room for two passengers in the middle.

We had a hard but beautiful ride "up" for 45 minutes. Boy, I thought I was out of shape til I found up that we were indeed going up. That struggle and sweat was all worth it when we got to go back downhill for the 20 minute ride back. Did you ever notice how sweet the easy stuff is after you have worked so hard? I mean, that 20 minutes ride would not have been so wonderful had we not worked so hard to peddle uphill. It was amazing. The boys learned a good lesson about the rewards of hard work.

While in the Ardennes, we were able to spend time exploring and learning about the Citadel Namur. This was an amazing fortress with over 2000 years of history. All these places were always built way atop a hill. This particular one is built where two major rivers merge so it was at a very strategic point.

We toured the outside parts of the citadel, with it's mighty walls......

And holes from canon balls

On this part of the tour, we took a tram ride with Gramma.

We also toured the underground tunnel network. It is one of the largest in all of Europe. After people starting using canon balls in wars & battles, the walls of the above ground fortress proved to be less than adequate. So, they started building tunnels and underground forts/hideouts. These tunnels were amazing. They had spanish influence from when the Spanish occupied them. They had German parts, French parts, Roman parts and of course, Belgiun parts.

Walking through some of the oldest parts of the tunnel system.

An officers bunker during World War II

Firing hole for guns.

One more highlight from this leg of our trip was the boys High Ropes Adventure outside Dinant. I actually think this was one of their highlights from the entire trip.

Gearing up for the adventure (I would like to mention, we were visiting our best friends who have moved to Belgium. The 2 boys you don't recognize as mine belong to them. They also have two little girls you may see in several pictures.)

The boys on the practice section.

Then, it was time to move on to the course. Starting with a bridge that the walked up from ground level, they moved on to bridges of different types. The bridges also got progressively higher.

The second bridge had a wood 2x6 to walk on and was about the half the height of some REALLY big trees.

The next was higher and simply had a cable to walk on.

Then, before I knew it, they were calling to me from WAY up high. This bridge had some 2x4's and some cables sectioned about a yard apart. For the record, my camera was zoomed in as far as it would go when I took this picture was taken. They were WAY up there!!!

Here is one zoomed all the way out to normal. See my children, those little dots in the sky?

After 2 1/2 hours of amazing adventure, it was time to end with a zip line that was VERY high.

Here they are waiting there turn for the zip line down. See how high they were? You can get a feeling for it by looking at the road and valley in the distance. Yikes!