Visé

21 May 2015:  Bonjour!  We entered the Province of Liège yesterday, where the official language is French.  After almost three weeks of hiking through Dutch- and Flemish-speaking areas — where we generally spoke English with the people we met — we are now in an area where we can speak the local language.  Of course, Belgian French is not the same as French French, but it's close enough...

We hiked today from Eban-Emael to Visé (16 km).  The trail was a mixture of field and forest.  It was unremarkable, except that we entered an area of hills and plateaus — a noticeable change from the flat lands of The Netherlands and Flanders.

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Hiking out of Eban-Emael:

What's that?!  Have we stumbled onto the set of Game of Thrones? 

It's a castle built with flint by Robert Garcet. See www.musee-du-silex.be. 

We were unable to buy food for a picnic lunch today, so we ate an artery-clogging lunch in a friterie. 

This GR marker gave us more detailed information than usual:

We saw several signs like this one, explaining the GR5:

Young pears:

We crossed the Albert Canal and the Meuse River to reach Visé.  The Hôtel de la Gare, our destination, was visible in the distance:

Relaxation in a café at the end of the day: