Birthday Meuse-ings

Today was my birthday! I turned eighteen on a tunnelbana platform in Stockholm and I turned twenty-one in the capital of Europe - as "key-to-the-door" birthdays go, mine are fairly appropriate.

After fully expecting to spend my birthday alone prior to my arrival, the actual day turned out far better than expected. After some celebratory beers with a couple of new friends the night before, on the morning of the 29th I was whisked away by a beautiful stranger for a road-trip of the Meuse valley,* Belgium's industrial heartland in the francophone south.

After speeding out of Brussels with French eurodance filling the car, our first port of call was Namur, the capital of Wallonia (French-speaking Belgium). A pretty red-brick town straddling the confluence of two rivers, Namur's two-up, two-down terraced houses and slightly faded industrial glory did nothing but reaffirm my belief that Wallonia and the north of England are long-lost cousins. (Indeed, Belgium was the first country after Britain to "enjoy" an industrial revolution, and was our only real rival in terms of the speed and ruthlessness of development.)

Next stop, Dinant (see above), a town wedged right into the Meuse valley with its back spectacularly lodged under a sheer cliff, itself topped by an old citadel. Despite only having a population of around 13,000, Dinant has blessed the world with two wonderful gifts - Leffe beer and the saxophone, invented here in 1846 by Adolphe Sax. (Seriously.) It is also home to a rather distinctive church and "Europe's hardest biscuit." There's a cable car to the citadel, and the views from the top were stunning - entirely worth the creaky, shit-your-pants ride to the top. Almost.

After a quick hop across the border into France to get "proper jam," we headed back into Belgium and wended our way up the river back to Brussels, still finding enough time to make three more stops - a riverside chateau, the adorably chocolate-box village of Spontin and Genval, a lake to the south of Brussels surrounded by impressive mansions - a sort of Belgian Millionaire's Row or The Hamptons.

After a day of driving and answering my no-doubt tedious questions, my gracious tour guide still managed to cook me some gourmet burgers on our return to the capital, as well as surprise me the next morning with breakfast delivered to the door - complete with a rose. If this is how all birthdays are now that I'm a "real adult," I can't wait to turn twenty-two.

*EDIT: Interesting factoid! Wikipedia tells me that the Meuse river is the oldest in the world, at a ripe old age of 380 million years.