 The Red Penguin Some kind of stop-start blogging going on since 1999.
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DiksmuideDiksmuide (or Dixmude if you're French - and I don't know how to properly pronounce either word) is a quaint little town 52 miles from the Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles (16 miles inside Belgium) so easily less than an hour if you put your foot down, as everyone does on the E40.This town is just half the size of Billericay but it has a great town square - and visiting two weeks before Christmas, there was a great buzz there - food stalls, a clown with perfect English making balloon animals of flowers (for girls) and guns (for boys), and a stage set up with a performance for some local bands including the oddly named Bambi Bitches.  And of course not forgetting three old santas playing Dixieland jazz in front of a snow machine ...  Despite there being tons of places to eat in the square we decided to go into 'T Gouden Mandeken which we've visited before - possibly serving the world's best spare ribs (ribbetjes in Dutch). Instead of dousing them in barbecue sauce, they're covered in paprika and just taste a whole lot better. This was our placemat at the restaurant which I thought was brilliant.  Although the place looks extremely old the town centre was mostly built in the 1920s after being destroyed in World War 1. We left just as the sun was setting and the edge of town sees the IJzertoren, a peace monument by the river Yser.  I don't think a trip to Belgium would be complete without stopping off at Delhaize, the Belgian equivalent of Tesco or something. Being a beer lover but too wussy to enjoy the really strong trappist beers, I was happy with finding Jupiler - costing about £2 a litre (at a time when an equivalent beer in the UK such as Stella would be around £3.50 a litre from the local Costcutter) and delighted to reacquaint myself with Delhaize's own brand pilsner, which at 26 cents per 330ml can works out at about 66p a litre. Paint stripper it ain't, it's actually very drinkable.  |
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