Friday 25th July - Part Deux

I am home now as I write but wanted to finish Friday's post and cover the journey home.

Because I was on holiday I decided on a nap when we checked in at the Novotel but Ali wanted to go out so she headed off for a bar that we saw that seemed to have the cheapest Stella in town. I joined her in the bar an hour later and worked out why it was the cheapest in town without too much trouble. It was a real working man’s boozer – and they were smoking inside. Having that first drink and lighting up felt to right but somehow so naughty! It’s amazing how quickly you get conditioned to life’s rules. Has it only been a year since the blanket smoking ban in the UK?

Ali had been talking to the locals before I got there and she had discovered that it was the bar that the Stella workers went to after their shifts finished. She mentioned the tour and was told that if she got “friendly” with one of the workers they could probably give her a “private tour”. As the Sunday newspapers say, “She made her excuses and left”!

We went from the cheap bar to the main square where we had eaten the night before, via McDonalds so we could experience the Big Mac with a beer! We didn’t really want the food so we shared a Big Mac and small fries just so we could take a photo of the tray with the beer on it! Belgium is a cool place where you get beer in McDonalds and can smoke in bars. I think I have found heaven on earth, although my doctor may not entirely agree with that sentiment.

We went on to a bar in the main square where we had a few drinks sitting outside in the sun watching a stage being set up for a tropical music event that evening, sponsored of course by everyone’s favourite beer! Stella sponsors a music festival in Leuven through the summer with a different theme every Friday night. They were doing the sound tests on the stage and setting up the mobile bars. We love work – we could watch it all day!

We did manage to obtain a really good Stella pint jug from that bar. The barman was leaving in 3 weeks to set up his own bar so he said just take it when I offered to buy it from him.

We went back to the dingy bar for a second round of cheap beer and got talking to the barman and a bloke called Merlin (we kid you not) who had been inside the Stella plant where they run “Tap School” to teach bar staff how to pour the perfect pint. It’s quite an art!

I asked Merlin if he got a lot of wizard jokes about his name, explaining that I got the Harry Potter jokes on account of mine. So there we were, Harry Potter and Merlin the Wizard in a bar in Leuven. Picture that if you can!

We left it far too late to get proper dinner so we settled for a kebab (and a bloody nice one at that) from just about the only place open in town before heading back to the hotel for the final night of the holiday.