By Karen Quinn-Panzer
Travel Matters
Karen Quinn-Panzer
This canal cruise is a wonderful combination between old-world Belgium and new-world technology on the Belgium canals.
The canal barge holds 20 people in 10 small cabins with a beautiful lounge and dining room. The chefs traditionally are retired from Michelin-star restaurants, and there’s a crew of six including captain, purser, waitstaff and housekeeping. There is a spacious top sundeck plus an open-air deck in the bow of the ship with a hot tub onboard.
We chartered the ship for a group of friends, but you can also join an existing sailing in Belgium or on six different canals in France including the upper Loire, Alsace region or the south of France.
We started out from Halle, about 40 minutes from Brussels, where we enjoyed a beautiful tour of the Grand Palace with the city hall (started in the 1400s) framed by the Guild Houses of the 17th century.
We enriched our historical tour with cultural stops at The Friet Museum (where we learned that Belgium invented the fries – not France). We enjoyed a chocolate making workshop of Belgian praline chocolates where we got to taste our accomplishments.
A visit to Brussels would not be complete without a beer workshop by Dr. Beer. We sampled local favorites: lambic (lager infused with sour cherries) and gueuze (a sour beer). Following those two were Saison and Trappist with Roquefort, which has an after-dinner aperitif quality to it. There are over 300 Belgian beers, each with their own special glass.
The six-night barge trip is comprised of tours to local towns and cities such as Mons, Bruges and Ghent, as well as scenic sailing on the canals. All meals and beverages are provided onboard.
Back on the canal, we experienced two engineering marvels in one afternoon which replaced many older locks. They saved a lot of time and water and were quite interesting to behold.
The Ronquières inclined plane allowed our barge to slide over a significant difference in elevation over a 1,432-meter slope (about 4,700 feet). It’s sort of like an escalator for barges operated by two rail-mounted tanks with a 5,500-ton counterweight.
Just when we thought we had never seen anything as amazing as this, a few hours later we came to a huge monolith in the middle of the canal known as the Strépy-Thieu boat lift on the Canal du Centre in the province of Hainaut, which took 20 years to finance and build. This was completed in 2002 to replace four boat lifts and two locks, and now accommodates 1,350-ton vessels. The lift is 383 feet high and weighs 220,000 tons to create an “elevator” for barges.
You can combine these barge trips with land stays pre and post-cruise in Brussels and Ghent, or nearby Paris.
Karen Quinn-Panzer is the owner and vacation specialist at Dream Vacations Quinn Panzer Travel in Milford.