We had fun relaxing for two days in a rustic cabin near the town of Wachtebeke. It’s okay if you’ve never heard of it. It’s a small village in the Flemish region of Belgium, but like all the other small Flemish towns it’s adorable and loaded with bread and produce (and oh hell yes!) chocolate vending machines, farms, canals, countryside. It’s always a good place to kick back, stoke a fire in the fireplace, explore and sip and stare. The rainbow pretty much landed in our back yard.

We also checked out Dendermonde, a small city on a river that has a cute Grand Place (or Grote Markt), a university, two UNESO sites and horse statues all over the place. Like Mons it has an ancient festival that stars a massive horse versus a dragon. Unlike Mons, this festival only happens once every decade. Its black steed was supposed to parade its way about town in 2020, but, well, you know what happened. It’s scheduled to come out and play again May 2021, so we’ve marked it in our calendars. Fingers crossed we’ll get to visit the big event. To learn more about this interesting town, not too far from Gent, check out this website.

Of course everything is locked down, so the streets were empty, but we enjoyed checking it out. Not being able to sip and stare at a cafe, though, is getting old. I’m glad we’re safe and all, but you know. Tomorrow, I go back to work, and then it’s 5 weeks until my two-week spring break. We’ll rent more cabins in small Belgian towns if we can’t cross borders. The hikes are always better than sitting in our apartment.

As you can see we make a lot of new friends along the way. So, we’re still finding a little magic in this Covid world. And some of us can still make maskless contact. Well, it’s a beautiful sunny day outside, so time for me to take a walk around Mons before getting myself back into work mode. Happy Sunday everyone!