Orval Brewery & Abbey

Over the weekend we had the pleasure of visiting the Orval Brewery & Abbey with our friends Matt & Liz and their two little sweeties.  Apparently the brewery only opens it's doors for tours once a year so we were excited when they accidentally ordered two extra tickets (all the way back in May) and invited us along!  It is about a 2 hour drive from Brussels so we made a day of it.  When we arrived I was definitely surprised at the sheer size of the place...the Abbey grounds were huge.

We were all kinda expecting to see Monks walking around running the place, but it was not like that at all...it was pretty high tech and similar to what you would see at Anheuser Busch...just smaller.

They let you get right up next to everything...

it was hard not to reach out and touch the bottles as they flew by.

After our tour, we headed to the cafe for lunch (along with everyone else) and after switching tables several times and finally understanding what we were "allowed" to order (I guess they had a limited menu due to the crowds, but understanding that from our French speaking server was quite the challenge) we all ordered a potato soup type dish that was fantastic!!!  Thank goodness too since it took about two hours total to get it.  After lunch we headed in to explore the Abbey grounds and the ruins from the old Abbey.  It was all quite beautiful and a great way to round out the day before we headed home.

We really enjoyed our trip to Orval...and are excited to check the other 6 Trappist breweries off our list sometime in the future!  Thanks Matt & Liz for including us!

Click here to view the full Orval album.