Travel

The tiny nation has lots going for it, including castles, chocolate, and beer

According to dinner-party chatter in the U.K., where the strong pound is making weekend breaks on continental Europe commonplace, Belgium is the new France.

"Plenty of culture, fewer tourists, and…" they tell each other with the pleasurable anticipation of those about to shock, "the food is often better."

Tiny Belgium, with its reputation for moules frites, chocolate, and beer is less than six percent the size of France and is unlikely to overtake its southern neighbour as the world's most popular tourist destination in the foreseeable future. It has only existed in its current form since about 1830, its territory the battleground for Austrian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, and Allied forces over the centuries. Nevertheless, much of its remarkable stock of fine historic buildings has remained intact.

In fact, the constant comings and goings of earlier conquerors only helped to increase the number of defensive castles and fortified residences, and unlike many of their better-known French counterparts, these mostly remain fully and elaborately furnished with the possessions their hereditary owners amassed over the centuries.

The River Meuse, which rises in France before snaking through Belgium's Ardennes region, was an important line of defence, and the towns along its banks have been heavily fortified since the Middle Ages, with many high points still sporting the ruins of castles and watchtowers.

Today, pleasure craft mingle with heavy industrial barges chugging along the river and linked canals that connect the Belgian port of Antwerp with a vast network of Dutch waterways. The Domaine de Freÿr, a short drive over a bridge and along the river from the bustling city of Dinant, is a Renaissance country house sitting on the river bank where a medieval castle once protected a ford. Originally built in 1561, the elegant red-brick-and-grey-stone mansion forms three sides of a courtyard, with a chapel and assorted outbuildings that have remained largely unchanged since 1775, when the fourth side of the quadrangle was demolished to let in more light to the remaining rooms.

"Now, we live in what I call the Kleenex civilization: everything is just thrown away," said the guide, a member of the family that has lived here for more than 20 generations. "But we have been going on since ages, despite all the problems of history. And that is why people come to visit us."

From the checker-floored two-storey main hallway lined with hunting scenes to the small chapel with its 16th-century stained glass, the rooms remain extravagantly fur?nished with tapestries, paintings, and, perhaps most memorably, a fully functional child-scale carriage with turquoise-and-gold trim and leather upholstery that is more than 300 years old.

Belgian law allows families to transfer historic houses to nonprofit trusts. Everybody wins: the owners avoid inheritance taxes and can continue to live in the property; the castle and its treasures stay together; and the public can come and see, for instance, the place where the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, signed the Treaty of Freÿr authorizing Belgium's first coffee imports while observing his forces reduce Dinant's hilltop citadel in the distance. Entrance fees help to ensure that the 350-year-old orange trees are put away snugly in their orangeries when winter winds begin to blow up the Meuse valley, and that the geometrical mazes made from six kilometres of hedges continue to confuse.

Puzzling out an escape from the mazes also builds up an appetite for dinner at another castle, now converted to a hotel and restaurant, the Château d'Hassonville outside of March-en-Famenne. This is an hour to the east of Domaine de Freÿr, including time for the seemingly unavoidable pleasure of getting lost in the equally mazelike tangle of winding country roads that give this castle a hidden quality even before its discreet electronic gate is finally discovered.

A long drive winds through green lawns past a donkey with a mournful honk of greeting to the turreted bulk of the house itself, its grey towers with spiny caps in darker grey slate enlivened by awnings at every window.

D'Hassonville is also family-run, but the castle has changed hands many times since its completion in 1687. The Rodrigues family has only been in possession since 1986, swiftly converting it into a hotel-restaurant whose prizewinning kitchen brings it regular mentions on top-10 lists of Belgium's restaurants.

For those who check into their spacious, high-ceilinged rooms early, a glass of champagne seems appropriate, taken at tables in the shade of a vast tree with views down to the lake. The landscaping is attributed to a student of Louis XIV's own gardener, Le Nôtre, the creator of the Parc de Versailles.

Consideration of the generous menu and encyclopedic wine list takes place in one of a collection of cozily cluttered rooms where the antique furniture and chandeliers reflect the flames of wood fires in the original fireplaces. The suprème de turbot en croûte de pommes de terre et caviar Osciètre, in which the saltiness of the caviar perfectly brings out the warmth of the fish, is just part of a generous €85 ($137) prix-fixe menu that would be worth a weekend trip in its own right, even were it not served in such charismatic surroundings.

Half an hour southwest, much of the route along the banks of a Meuse tributary, the 15th-century Château de Lavaux-Sainte-Anne with its moat, loopholes, and battlements, and its bulkier, largely windowless towers, seems at first far more truly military. It began at an unknown date as a guard tower on the Roman road from Cologne to Bremen, gradually growing into a group of towers connected by high walls. But as with many an Ardennes castle, the original Spartan exterior conceals later building of a softer kind. In peacetime these warlike places often became hunting lodges.

In the 17th century, as at Freÿr, one wall of the central courtyard was removed and the others lined with new residential buildings. With its largely blank exterior, the castle seems to turn its back to the world, but its courtyard- facing walls are of elegant brick with carved stone window frames, representing not only a different era but a completely different outlook on life.

The contents were sold off in 1905 and the high-ceilinged rooms now contain a hunting museum, which is being transformed into a nature museum to suit modern tastes, but which is still hung with racks of antlers from the surrounding park's deer and stocked with flocks of stuffed eagles, herons, kingfishers, and other birds. In the basement, the displays turn to the lives and livelihoods of those who resided beyond the castle walls or below stairs, with agricultural equipment, toys, and cooking utensils on display in the still-smoky servants' kitchen.

The contrast between military and domestic is even greater at the petite 13th-century hilltop Château de Vêves at Celles, just east of Dinant, where one taller grey tower dominates a huddle of them enclosing a small five-sided courtyard whose 16th-century half-timbered galleries lead to cozy apartments on a welcoming, more human scale. There's detailed domesticity in everything from the floor of the main hall, made from small pieces of sandstone laid in intricate patterns, to the gossamer stone vaulting of the oratory and the Calais lace on the dining table.

The castle's former owners, the Liedekerke Beaufort family, were diplomats, and portraits of both family members and the Dutch and French monarchs they served hang about the walls like today's family photos. Coincidentally, much of the castle's red silk-covered furniture was a gift from the Marchioness of Montespan, who accompanied her lover, Louis XIV, while he was at Freÿr, besieging Dinant.

More modest buildings in the Ardennes are also worth visiting, especially if their chefs are as talented as Francis Dernouchamps- Cawet, whose century-old post house, l'Hostellerie Saint Roch, stands on the banks of the Ourthe, a tributary of the Meuse, at Comblain-la-Tour south of Liège. His menu specializes in local ingredients: fish from Ardennes rivers, game from its forests, and fresh and sweet vegetables from the hotel-restaurant's own gardens. The damask-hung dining room with its snowy tablecloths is warm and attractive, but to taste the celebrated chef's wild-boar terrine, snails, or duckling on the terrace is the best way to end the day. The evening slides gently past like the river itself, and comfortable beds in well-furnished rooms ensure a good night's sleep.

The Belgians would be horrified to hear their country compared to France, but some of the dinner-party buzz is true. The sights are impressive, the food is exceptional, and the crowds are far smaller-at least until the reputation for moules frites, chocolate, and beer is justly augmented by one for haute cuisine, châteaux, and lush countryside.

ACCESS: British Airways (www.brit ishairways.com/) and Air Canada (www.aircanada.ca/) both offer flights to Brussels with a change of planes in London. For those already planning a holiday in the U.K. or elsewhere in Europe, B.A. has cheap advance fares to Brussels from several U.K. cities, Easyjet (www.easyjet.com/) often has absurdly cheap tickets from U.K. airports to nearby Amsterdam, and Ryanair (www.ryanair.com/) will fly you to nearby Eindhoven. Or, you can fly to Brussels from cities across the Continent very cheaply. Travelling by train is rather more expensive, but Eurostar's high-speed services from London to Brussels via the Channel Tunnel are more relaxing than flying (www.eurostar .com/). For those in Paris, the Thalys train uses the Eurostar lines to Brussels, and runs on to Amsterdam (www.thalys.com/).

The Belgian Tourist Office's site at www.visitbelgium.com/ is an essential first stop for general travel information, and also has information on tour operators and rail passes especially for Canadians.

For further information on the castles mentioned here see: Freÿr (www.freyr.be/), Hassonville (www .hassonville.be/), Lavaux-Sainte-Anne (www.chateau-lavaux.com/), Vêves (www.chateau-de-veves.be/), and Saint Roch (www.st-roch.be/).