Our first visitors:

The first weekend in March, we had our first visitors from the states. Our friends, Annie and Claire, came to the Netherlands to visit Annie's oldest brother, Greg, who is doing a Rotary exchange. Greg's friend, Brett, also came to visit. On Friday, all four of them arrived by train. We spent the evening relaxing, letting the kids play, and having dinner. On Saturday morning, Greg and Brett caught a train back to Holland, so that Greg could show Brett his part of the world. Claire, Annie, Will, Ellen and Laura all went to Beersel castle, which is only a 15 minute drive from our house. It is a ruin, but still quite beautiful and interesting. It's the perfect place for the kids to run around and pretend to be knights and princesses.

The castle was built between 1300 and 1310 by Jean II, Duke of Brabant, as a southern outpost of Brussels. The castle is considered the best preserved example of medieval military architecture in Belgium. It has a wide moat (which was mud where we were there), a drawbridge, massive brick towers, parapets, and dungeons.There are lots of stairs to climb in three different towers. The kids loved the machicolations (openings in the floor through which boiling oil, heavy stones, and chamber pot contents - a la Monty Python - were dropped on the heads of invaders.) They also loved the embrasures (slits for archers.)

The castle surrounds a large cobblestone courtyard with an eight-pointed star in the middle. Probably the best part was the torture chamber. Ellen found a whole new way to torture Will!

Click to go to:

- the first page of our website, from which you can go to other pages

- the next page - Villers la Ville Abbey

After the castle, we went to downtown Waterloo for dinner and had a great evening together. Anna and Claire left on Sunday morning to head back to the Netherlands to be with Greg. It was a short visit, but lots of fun and we appreciated every minute we had with them.