Le Ry D'Ave

During last summer's visit to the Wallonia region of Belgium we were driving around looking for a place to stay. There seemed to be very little anywhere near the main road. We had just left Luxembourg City the night before. We were headed to Waterloo for the 200th anniversary of the battle. But in the region in between we seemed to be surrounded by green forests with very large trees that stared down at you from hillsides. My husband said we were driving through the Ardennes. "What about the Ry d' Ave?" My husband suggested. I'd never heard of it. Apparently it was a small inn by the roadside, but we couldn't figure out which one. We called the owner. He gave us directions. We had already passed it and doubled back. We couldn't miss it coming the opposite direction. The quaint pink inn built in 1830 rose before us. It was indeed at the crossroads. Outside on the road was posted a sign that advertised it was located between Ave et Auffe and Rochefort. It became the model for the inn from which the heroine of the novel, Inn at the Crossroads, comes. Outside was a pond along with a small garden. Inside to the left was the restaurant open only at dinner and to the right the breakfast room. The owner warned us to be careful of the deep step down into the room. Everywhere sat collectibles, moody antiques, and bric-a-brac including a doll in a chair, statuettes of elephants, and two red mice that look like Christmas. We were assigned to a suite on the second floor up a narrow, steep staircase. The room looked very old with original stone walls in the hallway that led between two bedrooms. The ceiling showed off the original wooden beams. A window box with flowers was a nice touch. But whenever traffic went by on the road outside the entire building shook. Old, atmospheric, and even a little bit scary, the inn was definitely from the nineteenth century, which was exactly what I needed. I only had to add 15 years to the age of the structure and voila it could have been sitting there at the time of Napoleon. Breakfast the next morning in the breakfast room was so country French and so ample that it inspired the scene in chapter one of the novel where Lizette is serving her own guests in the very same room before setting off on her adventures. Just in time for New Years take a photo tour of the Ry d' Ave, its dining room, and its breakfast room.