Bastogne

As our time winds down in Germany and Europe starts to open up again, we want to get the kids out a bit and see at least a few things. Yesterday, we did a day trip to Bastogne, Belgium.

Bastogne is a small town nestled in the Ardennes, a region full of natural beauty (forests, hills, farms, pastures). It's a wonderful place for outdoor enthusiasts, but the town gets most of its tourism from those interested in war history.

The Battle of the Bulge- the failed German counterattack in the closing months of WWII- happened here. As such, the town has multiple museums, monuments, and other sites related to the conflict. Here's how our trip went.

We left just after 6:20am (impressive, for us), for the 3-hour drive. We made outstanding time- nobody's on the road at that hour on a Saturday- and arrived in Bastogne right around 9am. We stopped in the town square (shown above) and immediately found a bakery, where we could introduce the kids to Belgian waffles (the Liege style, with pearls of sugar). They immediately demanded (and were denied) a second waffle, rightly perceiving an amazing taste not to be found elsewhere.

After the waffles, we meandered around the town center. We enjoyed the McAuliffe monument and tank in the square, went south to a park with a bush maze, circled around to the Patton monument (in a car park of all places), and came back to the square to head to our next destination: foxholes.

The foxholes of 'Easy Company' (in the 101st Airborne) were the highlight. They are unprotected and have been filled in over the years by natural causes, but still a sight to be seen. In a way, their uncelebrated presentation heightened the experience (in America, I'm confident the entire area would have been roped off and more 'touristy'). We tried to imagine what it must have been like, living in such horrible conditions for so long. We visited this area before- back in 2010- and noticed a few things we missed last time, to include makeshift crosses dotted throughout the area.

After the foxholes, it was on to Bastogne War Museum. We didn't go in- we've been before, and the pandemic makes us avoid confined areas- but we enjoyed the impressive monument just outside it.

Heading back into Bastogne, we stopped at the local Carrefour market to pick up the standard Belgian fare: waffles, chocolates, and beer. It was then back into the town center in search of french fries, another country specialty. And then chocolates, of course, at the Leonidas store, which also had a pod-based ice cream machine that produced shockingly good soft serve. The food was amazing.

Where next? We wanted to see Bastogne Barracks- a museum that looked suitable for pandemic touring, based on its larger spaces and widely-spaced displays- but we couldn't figure out if it was open (it looked closed when we drove by). In hindsight, we should have investigated that further. 

Still, it was a nice day out, and on the way home, we decided on a whim to stop in Luxembourg- more on that tomorrow.