belgium

It's a long weekend in France; most weekends are long in May because wehave 3 holidays during the month that create 3 great long weekends. Ihave no clue what we might be celebrating, but whatever is just finewith me. So we head on up to Belgium. Not to Brussels, but to some small townsouth of Brussels that is known for kayaking and climbing. There'splenty of rock and plenty of water for both. Day 1 Kevin is stuck in some major traffic jam due to the "farm in thecity" event which is some little fair. Local girls in sequins ridinghorses down mainstreet sort of clogged things up I guess. (I wonderwhen the "city in the farm" event might be ... and what that might looklike. I laugh..) So I am running through this town with my stack ofcredit cards and bank cards, all mixed in with my stack of frequentflyer cards. Nothing seems to work ..... nothing until the very lastbank. When it asks me how much money I want, I realize I don't have aclue. There's this massive line for this machine and it's full ofFrench, Germany, Dutch speaking people who I doubt can rattle off theconversion back to the green stuff, back to US dollars. I hit thehighest amount and hope it isn't tooo much. What will I do with BelgiumFrancs when I am not in Belgium any more? Day 2. I am sitting in a tent with a major lightening storm going on.I would worry that we have metal poles in the tent, but we aresurrounded by about a million big RV campers. These aren't justcampers, but they have built rooms out of tarps, added satellite dishes,porches, patios, etc. (Yes, we felt pretty silly huddled next to ourlittle camp stove, sitting on a wet blanket in a pile of grass.) So weget sick of the rain and drive to Luxembourg... Ahhh, we cross the border and I get the bright idea of wanting to go thebathroom. Only they charge for the bathroom and now we don't have theright currency (again). Kevin pays for gas so he thinks he saw aconversion table back to French Francs, only it doesn't quite all addup. He's going from FLUX (Luxembourg francs) to French Francs to USdollars. I am so confused ... I take some odd assortment of change tothe bathroom and hope they are gonna let me out. I run by the woman andshove Belgium and French money at her... she smiles. Either sheunderstands OR I just gave her 5 bucks to go ... who knows. Luxembourg is really just a nice city. They actually take just aboutany money you can imagine ... well, French, German, and Belgium. Soright there, we are off to a good start. (Right at the parking garage... we pull in and immediately go look to see if we can figure out howto pay. I mean, that could be another disaster....) Anyhow, Lux is justthis great city that has a deep canyon running through the middle... ithas tons of cool bridges that run you back and forth from one side ofthis canyon to the other. Walking trails just wind up and down thecanyon, making it a place of discovery. Nice... Day 3. So finally the weather seems to have dried out and we are off toclimb. We have the guide book so we know exactly where we are going. Iam worried when we get to the parking lot and at 10 am there are amillion cars. Nobody in France climbs before noon so I figure it's acultural thing. We find a route, with a father/son team who look like they are going tobe pretty quick. So we get all set up and ready to go while thefather leads the route. Now, first you gotta realize that this kidcan't be any bigger than 70 pounds. Twiggy arms and legs. Nothing tohim ... and dad is up on the route. I can't figure out how that kidisn't going to just go flying if dad falls off the route. The wholescene makes me nervous... but dad gets up and the son follows. So they are both on a ledge and they yell down that Kevin can come onup. I never like to follow anybody up... but the park is packed so wefigure we better take the chance. Kevin is getting ready to go andsuddenly a shoe lands right next to him. We look up and it's the nextguys over ... someone dropped a shoe. Nice... So freak deal. We both have helmets which is more than I can say formost of the gumbies around us. Kevin starts to climb and this horde ofpeople show up and start to climb another route next to us. It's aroute that looks like it should be the hiking trail up because it's soeasy. But ok... it's good to start on something easy. Kevin gets up to the guys on the ledge and I watch him climbing over andunder their ropes. He hooks in and waits. He waits some more... Thefather just clips his son onto to harness with a few slings and theybegin to rappel down. This kid is just hanging off the back, with arms,legs going every which direction. (Yes, the kid looks terrified ... andI can't believe this stupidity.) They get all tangled up in our ropesand they come swinging to the ground. Dad just about face plants thekid into the rock.... Now, as I am waiting for them to get out of the way... at this point,Kevin is giving me these signals not to move because he wants these guysoff this route before he unclips anything to come down. Realize that wearen't talking, but I can figure out a few good hand signals. So I amwaiting for this son/father team to move when I notice that to my rightthere are 4 people clipped into the same bolt! Two of them are justswinging on the bolt... UGH! It doesn't take a rocket scientist tofigure this one out ... After Kevin comes off, we decide to leave. It's a nice day, but I don'treally want to spend it carrying someone out of this climbing area. Wedecide that rock areas next to flat countries are just too dangerous....so we spend the day trying to find creative things to use up BelgiumFrancs and the new collection of Luxembourg Francs. Now I have more money to add to my shoebox bank. Yes, little plasticbags of money. I am not sure what to do with it all... hmmm... I amgetting ready to do a lot of trips across Europe. Munich, Milan,Warsaw, Dublin, London, Stockholm, and Oslo all in the next couple ofweeks. I can only imagine ... more little bags of strange money I can'tfigure out. I keep meaning to turn it all into jewlery ... a necklaceof all small coins that I can't figure out. Wouldn't that be funny...