Visit a trappist brewery in Belgium

“I was lucky enough to spend the summer of 2007 in Belgium and made the trip to Orval. Visiting Orval can be a truly cathartic experience on a summer afternoon. The brewery and most of the monastery is not open to the public. However, there is an visitor center/shop and cafe. For about an 8 Euro entrance fee, visitors can wander around the ruins of the original monastery. A great deal of the walls are still intact and nature has reclaimed part of this area. There is something inexplicably cool about standing in the middle of a chapel with a grass floor, no ceiling and surrounded by stone walls. After I walked the ruins, I sat down at the Cafe to enjoy the Orval patersbier and some of the famous Orval cheese. This cafe is one of the only places to get the Orval patersbier which is a lower alcohol beer made for the consumption of the monks.”

“Since arriving here many people have spoken about the beer, how tough it is to get and that it is worth the effort. I, along with a few fellow Aussie expats (Hi Merv and Sally) decided that we were going to give it a crack and try to secure an appointment. Merv and I tackled the phone line using an auto redial app on our smartphones. Merv racked up 500+ attempts and I managed 227 before I was lucky enough to get through. An appointment was made for Monday 29th June. We were all really excited and the following Monday made our way southwest of Brussels to the Saint Sixtus Abbey. Roadworks meant that the trip took around 2 1/2 hrs [...] We had around an hour or so before our appointment and visited the adjoining In De Vrede cafe and stocked up on 2 six packs each, some beer glasses and had a bite to eat. We all sampled a Westlvleteren 12 and were blown away by the complex sweet flavours of this famous brew. I found it hilarious that the cafe serves this beer (which is the beer equivalent of a top quality French Bordeaux red), whilst only selling the gastronomically low brow Croque Monsieur (ham n cheese toasted sandwich).”