I had planned a day trip to this castle in advance of the trip because it has a special garden event in April. It was a very welcome break from busy Brussels and there were 14 hectares of lovely gardens to wander through. It was not crowded at all and I could feel myself relaxing more and more as we went along. My soul really does belong in the countryside.
The castle itself dates from the 12th century and the current castle is 17th century Flemish-Renaissance style. It is usually only open for events so we managed our timing well. It has quite an interesting history which includes sieges, seizures, political intrigue, and even loss of life for religious reasons.
We entered the grounds crossing over the moat on a five-arched stone bridge that leads to the drawbridge. Once inside we wandered through many separate gardens and there were so many beautiful flowers! We saw bridges crossing the stream that feeds the moat and garden sculptures too.
The garden event is called Floralia and there are bee sculptures hiding within the gardens for children to discover. We saw a type of goose we had never seen before and Google identified it as an Egyptian Goose. There was a whole little family of them with about 6 goslings. They were so cute!
It was a really enjoyable day and we spent more than half a day here. On the way back to Brussels we stopped at Beersel castle on a whim, then headed back to Brussels for our last night there.
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