When I log into the edge of my seat after several months without posting a blog entry I typically read through the last several posts and ask myself “what has happened since?” This time it is hard to answer, there are so many things. I’m not so narcissistic as to think you care about all the details but just enough to think you’ll be interested in the highlights.
A few weeks after we got back from Europe, Mr. Butterflies proposed. Everything about it was perfect and romantic and magical. And it started in motion a series of events that have gone by in a big blur of awesome.
We spent the first few weeks of our engagement getting used to the word “fiancé” (which is fun to say on a few different levels) and talking a thousand miles an hour about wedding plans. It has to be fun, and classy but not uptight. And there has to be good food and we’ll source it locally, and we want people to dance. And we’ll serve awesome beer. A short ceremony, with a little bit of humour – sentimental but not cheesy. The venue will be unique and interesting and somewhere that is special to us. It will be vintage meets rustic, and the perfect balance between masculine and feminine. I bought magazines and subscribed to blogs like Green Wedding Shoes and Style me Pretty and pored over the photos, bookmarking ideas. We made spreadsheets to compare venues and set recurring appointments to block off time to meet vendors. Recent brides are never shocked to hear that the fun of wedding planning began to wear off after a few weeks.
Fast forward through a few jaw-dropping realizations about the cost of a wedding in downtown Toronto and the politics of formulating a guest list…hearing ourselves say aloud “we won’t be buying a house any time soon, we have to pay for the wedding” was the final straw. So we decided to do what made sense for us: split the wedding into two events.
We got married on a Saturday evening in the wine cellar of Splendido, one of Toronto’s nicer restaurants. There were only 13 guests, and I didn’t even buy new shoes. After dinner we met a few friends at a dive bar known for a great beer selection (The Rhino) and stopped for some late night falafel on the way back to our suite at the Gladstone Hotel. Every little thing about the night was absolutely perfect – we even got free dolmades when we told them it was our wedding night! Sunday we nursed hangovers with Thai food and trashy TV and we were back to work on Monday.
Saturday we became husband and wife. I’ve already started going by Mrs. Butterflies and hoping the adrenaline rush I currently get from calling him ‘my husband’ never fades. Our ‘real’ wedding is this summer, and we’re inviting our friends and loved ones to share in that special day. We have the same aspirations for our wedding as before: It has to be fun, and classy but not uptight. And there has to be good food and we’ll source it locally, and we want people to dance. And we’ll serve awesome beer. Only maybe not classy. Advice from married friends tells us that 7 months into our marriage will be an opportune time to reaffirm those promises we made.
People ask me if I feel any different as a married woman. Not yet. Being engaged felt different, and being married feels like an extension of that. I’ve started feeling like a ‘grown up’ for the first time. I developed a sense of invincibility as a teenager and held tight to it through my twenties. No matter what happens, I’ll figure it out. I’ll be okay. What’s the worst that could happen? But when I promised to spend my life with him I realized that the ‘with him’ is only one part of that promise. Taking care of him and taking care of myself are one in the same now.
Everything has taken on more meaning. Like what? Like how we LOVE Value Village. There is one in our neighbourhood and we often stop by multiple times a week. And now it is not just something to do, it is a thing. Our thing. One of our many things. A thing that someday we’ll look back and say, “Remember when we moved into our first place together and used to go to Value Village three times a week?” We’ll tell our kids about this and they’ll roll their eyes.
We use this logic to make ourselves feel better about the crappy place we’re renting right now. When the neighbours’ dogs are barking incessantly or their arguing keeps us up at night we think, “Someday this will be a memory” and it seems more funny than not. And this, I’m coming to realize, is the amazing thing about marriage. All those moments can be a thing if you let them be – for the best or for the worst. And as long as we stay on the same page we’ll either be happy together, sad together, or somewhere between things together.
After Amsterdam and Belgium, our European adventure took us to Portugal. I was especially excited for this part of the trip because unlike our previous stops it was new to me. It scratched my travel itch – for now.
We started in Porto, which was entirely disappointing: it was miserably hot and our scooter-renting vineyard-touring river-cruising plans didn’t work out. We did get a chance to tour a port cellar and visit a tasting room – where we “sampled” so much that we stumbled home early and felt sluggish the next day. There are very few things, however, that can’t be cured by food and spa treatments. Mr. bought me a one hour massage and a tasty brunch at our hotel, the Sheraton Porto Hotel and Spa. The rest of the details are (even more) boring, so I’ll summarize by saying that I highly recommend the Calem wine cellar tour and C.N. Kopke tasting room – and if anyone tries to convince you to take a 10 euro river cruise you should punch them in the face and run the other way. We weren’t exactly disappointed to leave the next morning and after three hours on slow moving, bumpy train we reached Lisbon.
I loved everything about Lisbon. We stayed in a tiny apartment in the historic Alfama area – it was humid and smelled of sewage but we weren’t there much and the charm of the neighbourhood by day cancelled out the suffering by night. There was an old woman with three teeth and a goatee who walked up and down the hilly streets each day and spat on the ground every time I smiled at her. The door of the house next to ours was open and we watched two stray dogs wander in. The woman who lived there liked to eat plums and throw the pits out the window onto our doorstep. I was amazed by how much laundry everyone seemed to do – every morning, at every house, the amount of clothes hung out to dry indicated these people were either changing underwear four times a day or the houses were more crowded than we’d realized. I’m glad we opted for a local apartment rather than a hotel, luxury travel was great but this was authentic.
We were extremely fortunate to have locals to show us around the city. A university friend of Mr.’s and her husband (a Lisbon native) were in town and met up with us. He happens to be a PhD student in Portuguese history and gave us an amazing personalized tour. They took us to non-touristy restaurants and helped us navigate so that we were able to check most of our must-see sights off the list in a couple of days. Long days, with lots of walking up and down hills – but perfect given our short timeframe (and the amount of beer consumed during the first part of our trip). We saw the Chiado and Bairro Alto neighbourhoods by night and by day, as well as the site of the 1998 World’s Fair. It was all amazing, and to describe it here wouldn’t do it justice.
The most notable thing about Lisbon (for me) was its similarity to San Francisco. The steep hills and historic street cars were just the start. The bridge across the Douro looks like a replica of the Golden Gate and the poorest neighbourhoods exist right across the street from the nicest.
Our third day in Lisbon we were on our own. We took the train to Sintra but got back on it after less than an hour. It was a beautiful historic town but overrun with obnoxious tourists (I hate to say it, but they were mostly Americans), boring food, and overpriced souvenirs.
We went back to Lisbon and took the tram to Belém where we saw the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, a spectacular palace that had graced my computer’s desktop background for months. Seeing it from somewhere other than my desk felt like a real accomplishment.
Belém is famous for a few things, but none so much as the Pastéis de Belém. These custard tarts draw hundreds of people each day to stand in line and battle aggressive crowds just for a taste. Hundreds, including us. Rumour has it only three people in the world know the recipe – as with Coca Cola’s secret formula, I just don’t understand how this is possible. I’m not too worried about it, and for my health’s sake it’s probably good that no one in Toronto has it.
Aside from walking up and down the hills, most of our time in Lisbon was spent eating. I had the best meal I’ve ever had in my life (which deserves its own post, so stay tuned) – and we didn’t eat a bad one in our three days. We thought we’d use the kitchen in our apartment, but we didn’t cook a single meal there.
Our time in Lisbon ended way too soon. We didn’t feel like we ran out of time or missed a specific experience – but it felt like a place we could stay for months. My usual travel M.O. is to squeeze as many cities into each trip that the train schedule permits. Lisbon, like Florence, is somewhere I would like to return and stay for a while. On our last night in town we saw a Fado performance in a courtyard and shared a bottle of wine, toasting a wonderful vacation.
Fast forward several months and we’re arriving in Brussels. Days before, I’d taken Mr. to my original favourite beer place: Cafe Belgique in Amsterdam - naturally I defaulted to La Chouffe because I love it and you can’t get it in Ontario. But in Belgium it was time to get serious about trying new ones. Our first night we attempted to visit Le Bier Circus but they were closed. Disappointing, but it turns out literally every bar in Brussels has an excellent selection, so we managed. We took it easy because the next morning we had a bike tour and a beer tour planned. The beer tour was excellent – we visited the Delirium Café known for having the biggest beer selection in the world; the Cantillon Brewery, the only brewery in Brussels, one of few which make Lambic beers, and one of very very few using equipment that is over 100 years old and spontaneous fermentation (wild yeast instead of cultivated); and the Moeder Lambic beer bar. I highly recommend both tours.
Next stop: Bruges. The real reason we went to Bruges was that Mr. enjoyed the movie and wanted to check it out. It is still in Belgium and therefore consistent with our beer theme, but our expectations weren’t very high. Yet again we visited one of the pubs recommended in The Good Beer Guide to Belgium (‘t Poatersgat), and yet again it was closed during hours it was said to have been open. We can probably chalk that up to Europe’s propensity to take vacation seriously. We gave up and wandered over to the Burg, where a free outdoor concert was taking place. It hadn’t started yet so we ducked into a shop called De Struise Brouwers. 
There we met Urbain, one of the brew masters of the small but well known (among those in the know) brewery in West Flanders. Over samples of a few of their 30+ types of beer (many of them award winning), he told us the story of how he came to be a successful brew master: it involved 10 years in Africa, a few entrepreneurial ventures in IT and retail, and finally a realization that he wanted to do something he loved: make beer. The guy was fascinating.
We told Urbain about our plans to visit trappist breweries over the next few days. Turns out they were crap. The route we planned would not have worked out, our maps were not correct and we’d chosen some un-interesting places. He grabbed a pen and re-drew our map, even making a few phone calls to see if his friends could host us. After a day trip to Ghent and one more night in Bruges we took the train to Poperinge. Urbain had recommended we use it as our base for exploring the various nearby breweries.
Arriving in Poperinge felt like I imagine it feels like for an outsider to arrive in my home town – it is very small and very remote. I’m pretty sure we were the only tourists in town, but they did have an information booth in the main square. The helpful attendant informed us it was too late to rent bikes and the local bus service requires that you call 2 hours in advance – but the walk to St. Sixtus Abbey, home of Westvleteren 12, which has been rated the World’s Best Beer and certainly one of the rarest – was only 2km. She gave us a map and pointed us toward Brouwerij Westvleteren. It sounded like a nice walk, and we weren’t about to abandon our resolve to see this particular brewery.
Westvleteren beers can only be tried at the café In de Vrede next door to the abbey. The monks do not want their beer to become commercialized, and therefore take extreme measures to limit the sale. To buy it, you must make a reservation by calling the hotline, you can only call during specified 2 hour time slots on certain days of the week. The scheduling website mentions that even during those times you can only “probably” reserve the beer. Then you have to register your license plate and phone number, which they will verify before giving you your monthly limit of one case. And that is only if it is available. So far all intents and purposes, this was our one chance to try the world’s best beer.
It was early afternoon when we left Poperinge, the weather looked a little intimidating but we took our chances. We walked through a wealthy neighbourhood on the outskirts of town and eventually along a two lane highway with a generous shoulder for walkers and cyclists. We passed a couple of farms, and as they became fewer and farther between we stopped to ponder whether we’d come the right direction. The road sign reconciled with the map, but a quick calculation told us that if we’d been walking an average of 5km/hour we should have already gone 3km. The brewery was nowhere in sight, but we shrugged our shoulders and trudged on. Pretty soon the two lanes narrowed into one, and eventually to a dirt road. According to the map we were still going the right way. To make a very long story short: the rest of our journey involved a trek through a two foot wide space mowed through a corn field, being passed by a tractor, and finally, arriving at the abbey.
We walked into the café to find that our visit coincided with a seniors’ classic car tour and there were no seats available. We shared a picnic table with a local guy who informed us it was in fact 7km that we had walked. At long last, we ordered one of each beer: Westvleteren 8, Westvleteren 12, and Westvleteren Blond. All three were amazing, the journey was definitely worth it. Urbain had told us that the Westvleteren 12 was almost identical to the St. Bernardus Abt 12 and he was right – I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the two in a blind test. I wonder if the reason Westvleteren tops the list of world’s best beers while St. Bernardus doesn’t even appear on the list has to do with the exclusivity or the allure of trappist beers.
We met a Korean guy who quit his job as a tank engineer to take a 4 week beer tour of Belgium followed by 2 weeks of whiskey in the UK. He drank 3 beers while telling us he had walked over 10km each day for the last 2 weeks and had no idea where he was staying that night. I salute that guy. We thought about taking a taxi back to our hotel but found out they don’t really have taxis out there. The Belgian guy we sat with offered a ride, but after he gave us reason to believe he might be trying to kidnap and/or murder me and/or us, we decided to walk. The walk home seemed much shorter, as things tend to do after several beers. We took a seat at the first restaurant we found which turned out to be incredible. I had the best snails I’ve ever tasted and some cheese croquettes that make me question whether those things I had been eating in the Netherlands were in fact croquettes at all.
The next day we rented bikes and set out in the opposite direction, toward the city of Watou. Our destination: St. Bernardus. Their Abt 12 happened to be the beer we were drinking when we made the decision to come to Belgium, so it was only fitting. The bike ride was lovely – perfect weather and much more efficient than walking. We got to the brewery to find out that we had missed the daily tour and our experience was limited to a shop of overpriced monk emblazoned merchandise. The picture of the monk is misleading anyway – St. Bernardus is actually a commercial brewery and that monk doesn’t even exist.
We came all the way to Belgium to see a monk that doesn’t exist, but turned out to be an amazing experience anyway.
