Belgian monks are the best monks
Today we got to cross another country off our list….hello Belgium! For our final day we took an excursion to the Orval Brewery and cheese shop, managed by Trappist Monks in Belgium. Katja drove some very narrow rural farmland roads to get there. I was basically expecting a church and a tasting room, along with a hiking trail. But when we got there we discovered there are ruins to explore, modern art to experience, a history of the current and past lives of the monks to take in, and much more. It was really a museum. And the funny thing is…the one thing we expected..a tasting room…wasn’t there. You had to go off site next door to actually taste the beer and cheese made on site at the monastery. A view of the old apothecary. Some modern statues…with ruins of one of the original abbeys in the background. (The campus was destroyed twice…once during the French Revolution). It was rebuilt between the 1920s and early 1940s, and partially supported by the beer and cheese making.
