Jan's friends are big blues fans and it's a long tradition to go to the Belgium Rhythm & Blues festival each year, where
we sometimes joined. In the recent years a lot of them got little kids and it was a bit harder to organise their yearly trip. The women didn't just want to stay home and babysit each year and so a new tradition was formed to rent a little cottage in the nearby vacation park "
Center Parcs Erperheide" . The men can go in the afternoon and evening to the festival...but must get up early to take the children swimming in the tropical swimming pools in the morning, that's the deal. On top of that, they even spoilt us with excellent improvisation cooking (although approx 70 eggs is really a lot, even for a big group : D ). The childrenless couples had the perk to chose which activity to join :p
With 5 couples, 5 little kids and a young adult we occupied 2 bungalows and conveniently we slept in the "childless" one. It must be no surprise that the movement there only started 2-3 hours later than nextdoors. Sweet :p. Since all kids were together, most of the time we all crowded in one bungalow together and crammed there together for meals in shifts.....nice and very busy.
The weather gods had promised us a fall weekend as we had already experiended a few days last week, but all in all it stayed dry until the late afternoon on Saturday and we even got a bit of sunlight at Sunday noon. One needs only a little bit of sun combined with festival fatigue to doze off. Fortunately the continuously returning invasion of wasps managed to keep us awake and during the downpours we had to put some little toads back outside that managed to get into the hallway.
The blues festival had fortunately a tent big enough to provide shelter for all the fans, so we could sit and enjoy inside the virtuosity of Ian Siegal, the Paladins etc...(well I'm pretty blues illiterate, but they seemed excellent in their genre). I was also looking forward to seeing
Triggerfinger, since they have a very solid live reputation and also a very "loud" reputation. Both were true: too loud, hard , solid rock brought by excellent mucisians that also know how to handle the camera's and a crowd. Different from hearing their more commercial productions as radio hits. Their concert didn't really fit in the blues festival, but I enjoyed it although I doubt I'd pay a lot of money to see a concert from them alone.
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| Erperheide bungalows near the water (ours wasn't at the water though) |
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| The Pig Whisperer (I quote him) |
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| Hup hup hup |
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| Dirthills are so fun entertaining |
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| hanging out |
At the Belgium Rhythm and Blues festival
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| A quick afternoon nap before another afternoon at the festival |
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| A walk with the kids |
At the children's farm
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