Leuven With Frank And Didier

Impressions of a short trip to Belgium to meet up with Frank and Didier who had arrived just the day before from Singapore.

Frank arranged for us to stay in the Flemish countryside a short ride away from the historical and beautiful university city of Leuven and took the day off from the office to show us around.

And what a great tour he gave us.

Being a Friday it was market day at the imposing library square.

From there we strolled through the main old part of the city, having a long lunch in Muntstraat, a foodie’s paradise row of pleasant eateries, back to strolling the city and finally stopping at “The House of the 2000 Beers” to savour some of Belgium’s best beers and the passing by of pretty, young and mostly female students.

All of this of course accompanied by a selection of fine cigars brought in by the three of us.

It ranged from RA Regionals to single Vega cigars by Hector Luis Prieto to vintage classics and 1958 rare Habanas.

I had a 2008 MC LE Sublime for breakfast – ’nuff said …

We managed to narrowly escape a fine summer thundershower, picked up some subs and retired back to the countryside of Tielt-Wingen where Peggy, our landlady at the Silentium B&B was kind enough to provide a large tent for us to dine, drink, smoke and shoot the breeze on topics ranging from the progress of the II Edition, which Didier has had the pleasure to witness in person in Hong Kong to new cigar projects in Nicaragua for his Nicarao brand of excellent cigars to meeting again in Havana later this year or … pretty soon back in Belgium.

These face- to-face meetings with good friends, be it in Dublin, the pharmacy, Cuba, Switzerland or Belgium are the biggest personal pleasures in my cigar world – sure beat blogging and posting, so : ’nuff said.

Nino