Camping trip to Bouillon (1)

After a cold and rainy summer, the weather here is finally getting better. At the end of August, we made a short camping trip to Bouillon, Belgium. Bouillon is a very beautiful town at the southern part of Belgium near the French border. It's a very peaceful place with magnificent nature and scenery. Bouillon is very famous for its old castle. I am very happy that I had a chance to visit there.

It took us about 4 hours to travel from Holland to Bertix. Bertix is another small town in Belgium and we had to take a bus from Bertix to Bouillon. The bus ride itself is only about 30 minutes. However, we happened to travel there during school holidays, so there were only 4 buses running between Bertix and Bouillon. So we ended up waiting in the small town for about 2 and a half hour. It didn't really spoil our fun though. It gave us actually a good chance to take a look at this little town.

People there only speak French. Harm used his limited French to communicate with them. First, he tried to ask a kind old man working at the station about the bus to Bouillon. He reminded me of Dumbledore in Harry Potter, only that he can't speak any English. He told us that the next bus was in about 2 and a half hours. Then we decided to first get a drink. We then walked into this very old and smelly pub to get a drink. After the drink, Harm asked the lady there about the direction to a nearby supermarket. She was very kind and explained to us in great detail and of course in French also. She kept speaking and speaking as if we could really understand her. With the help of her body language -- her hands kept pointing ups and downs, I had a bad feeling that we might have to climb over a mountain to get to the supermarket. Harm understood a bit and there was actually one main road leading to the center. With a little walk down the slop, we found the supermarket and found things we need for dinner.

Since we didn't want to miss the next bus, we actually waited at a bus stop and when a bus pulled over, we tried to ask the bus driver about the next bus. He said something in French and we had no idea what he was talking about. He saw than and actually switched off the bus (about 15 passengers were onboard), found a piece of paper and wrote down the time for us. We were amazed by his kindness as well as the patience of all the people on the bus. Finally we successfully got on our bus and was on our way to Bouillon.

We arrived at Bouillon after 30 mins of bus ride. The first thing got into my eyes was the swans in the river. They were not real swans, they were swan-like paddle boats on the river, some of them were even in the shape of dolphins. They were very funny. We got off the bus, checked out the time for out return bus, then we started walking towards our camp site.

Along the way, we saw a lot of restaurants, cafe and different gift shops. Tables were set in front of the restaurants. I was instantly distracted by all the yummy food people were eating. This place was not as busy as the city, but it was definitely very lively with people enjoying themselves. As we turned around the corner, a hill with a big castle on top of it suddenly came into view. I was in awe. It looked so huge and high up. I've never seen such a big castle before. We walked through the tunnel under it. The tunnel led us to a totally different world behind the hill. It was a lot quieter and all I could see was green grass, green trees and a very beautiful river. We kept walking along the side of the road. Then we turned into a little path along the river and let it lead us to pur camp site. The walk was very pleasant. I was totally enjoying the view of the river and the greenery. Before we knew it we arrived the campsite. The campsite was actually very big, at the valley just beside the river. We picked a spot right next to the river. I haven't been camping a lot, so I was so excited about sleeping beside a river. Harm walked to the office and registered and I just sat down on the grass and enjoyed the great view. We then set up out tent and decided to walked back to the center for a little stroll. We enjoyed yummy ice-cream at a place called Mont Blanc and a very romantic walk around town.

We made dinner after we walked back to the camp site. We had stir fry vegetable and meat and Japanese cold noodle (soba) that night. I know...quite fancy for a camping meal, but we definitely enjoyed it. That night was unbelievably nice. The sky was clear and I felt like I was surrounded by all the stars. We just laid on the grass and enjoyed our romantic starry night. Sleeping in a tent is cozier than I thought. The only thing I didn't like was the moisture inside the tent. The temperature was quite low during the night I remembered being woken up by the chilled air and some flickering sound outside the tent. I didn't pay much attention and felt back to sleep.