Flanders Fields Museum | waitress

Ironically, our long, looping hunt for serene Saint Sixtus took us past the great battlefield of Waterloo and omnipresent reminders of World War I, including Ypres - the epicenter of WWI's bloody trench warfare, memorialized forever in the sobering In Flanders Fields Museum. Thousands of British soldiers found respite in nearby Poperinge's Talbot House, which remains a stirring museum. Poperinge is also the capital of Hoppeland, a region of towering­ poles that the hops climb to yield beer's traditional preserving and flavoring ingredient. When we saw the hop gardens and signs for Abdij Sint-Sixtus, I knew we were getting close.

We headed down a macadam lane through small villages and checkerboard fields mounded with rugby-ball-sized root crops. Coppices of trees punctuated the landscape. Couples in wool caps and head scarves walked the road. Traffic picked up. A file of slender bicyclists sped by. I suddenly caught a dash of color in the gray, mottled sky - a covey of five hang gliders swooping down on Technicolor pterodactyl wings.

In the distance, I spotted a low-slung fieldstone building with a large parking lot. The cyclists veered in. As we drew closer, the old abbey came into view, as stolid and resolute as faith itself. The hang-gliders dipped their wings and swept across the sky, crisscrossing the road as they slowly came to earth. As the first hang glider landed beside the fieldstone building, I finally realized that they, too, were dropping in for a beer.

The In de Vrede café was a cheery redoubt of beer fanciers. The slender cyclists turned out to be elderly guys in blue spandex waving at the waitress, as did the wind-bussed glider pilots who clomped in after us. A family of round Belgians with red cheeks sat happily hoisting goblets of dark beer. A table of British beer enthusiasts from the red double-decker bus in the parking lot compared tasting notes.