Dinant, Belgium

Hi there! I know, I know, this post is a tad late yet but there's a reason for that and the next blog post will tell you all about it! But here is my adventure from last weekend!!

Date: Saturday, September 23, 2023

Today, kind of like any other travel day, started nice & early to get the most out of the day! Today my train was at 9:00 AM but this time, I was travelling with two friends from my class, Yassine & Yassine!

It was about a 3-hour train ride from Ghent to Dinant, with a quick stop in Brussels to change trains. The 3 hours felt quite long but it was nice to have travel buddies to chat with and before we knew it we were seeing beautiful rock faces out of the train windows, signalling we were almost there!!

As soon as we got off the train we could already see the picturesque view that Dinant was famous for. Squeezing between tourists, this is what Dinant looks like:

It is SOOO beautiful. And again, different from any other cities I've been to! We decided that we wanted to get closer to the beautiful rock and head up to the Citadelle that's at the very top. If you squint, there are tourists right under the flag at the top of the rock. That's where we were going!

The Citadalle is at the top of 408 organically shaped, built in 1577, near vertical stairs. We bought our tickets, tied our shoes, and...

.... turned right to get on the gondola that takes you to the top. I know, I know, a little whimpy but we still got 28,000 steps this day so I think it's okay. AND we decided to walk DOWN the stairs so I think we can still say "Ya, we took the stairs".

The view from the top was almost as pretty as from the ground!!

In addition to great views, there was also a ton of history at the top! The Citadelle was originally built in the 11th century by the Prince Bishops of Liège, then destroyed in 1466, rebuilt in 1530, and taken by Louis XiV in 1675. At this point, it was more of a castle but in 1818, it was fortified and looks more similar to that of today. It wasn't functional as a fort or anything military-esc at the time but the Germans took it over in WWI. Paris told me that she likes hearing about WWII in my blog posts so here's some of that:

In WWI, there was a battle of Dinant! It was fought between the French and the Germans when Germany was invading Belgium, trying to cut off the French. Dinant (unfortunately) was located at a strategic crossing of the Meuse River (seen in the photo above). German troops arrived at Dinant and found French soldiers holding the Western shore and the Citadelle. There was a big battle and the Germans eventually won this and overtook the Citadelle. They brought machine guns, and this was an unfair fight for the French now. Some civilians in Dinant had briefly been trained by the French so they joined in, but when the Germans eventually won the battle, this backfired and the Germans killed A LOT of civilians because of their involvement. The Battle of Dinant and the subsequent massacres killed over 1,200 people in Dinant, including children as young as 3 months old.

In WWII, Belgium was again invaded by the Germans but there wasn't as much of a battle in Dinant. The Germans quite easily took over the Citadelle and occupied it until 1944. Dinant was partially destroyed by the Allied bombing as German forces were retreating.

That's enough of my war history, here's another view!

Heading down from the Citadelle, our next stop was the super cool church!

Unfortunately, all of the informative signs at the church were in Dutch (despite being in the French part of Belgium), so I didn't get any cool facts to share with you :( But the church's name is called the Notre Dame of Dinant in case you want to look up your own cool facts!

It was time for more exploring so we walked up a nice big hill (to make up for the fact that we didn't climb the 408 steps before), and headed to check out some caves!

This "grotto" was discovered in 1904 (quite recently for Europe!!!) and has been deemed the most beautiful grotto in Europe!

We were quickly running out of things to do in Dinant but it turns out that saxophones are a big deal here so we went to figure out why.

It turns out that the guy that invented the saxophone, namely Mr. Sax, was born in Dinant! This is him!!

Note: this is a copper sculpture of Mr. Sax, not the actual Mr. Sax... He died in 1894...

The final stop in Dinant was the Maison Leffe beer museum. We toured the monastery & abbey where Leffe was born, and of course, got to try it too! They even sent us home with our very own Leffe glass! Because, as we learned, the shape of the glass completely changes the beer-drinking experience!!

Then the Yassines and I headed back to the train station for the 3-hour ride back!

Dinant in a nutshell: cool history, an obsession with saxophones and lots of beautiful sites!!