Bokrijk Openluchtmuseum

We decided to explore a new part of Belgium today so headed to the Limburg province, Flanders.

Bokrijk village contains an open-air museum devoted to Flemish rural life before 1900 and is set among the forest and rolling pastures. It is made up of several different settlements which have been moved here and reconstructed and is manned by costumed guides. There are farmhouses, barns and workshops which offer live demonstrations on an assortment of traditional crafts such as making hats, weaving, pottery, riding old bikes and scooters and baking bread. The kids loved trying out the bikes and the maze made of bales of hay but we only really scratched the surface as it is a huge place so we have promised to return especially as we only discovered the pottery wheel classes on the way out which myself and Olivia would love to do.

So what has the above photo got to do with rural life in Flanders before the 1900s? Not a lot! For some reason there is also a sixties village which is part of the open-air museum and was great fun. We were each given an original passport from someone our age in the 1960s and through a wide range of multimedia touch screens we could discover how they lived. Olivia was Sofie, Dexter was Filip, Hubby was Jozef, and I was Amanda who was my kind of gal as she fought for equality and women's rights. We visited the hairdressers, the music shop, a pub, an electrics shop where we discovered how much TVs cost then and their equivalent price today, a cinema, a toy shop, a travel agent and a house where the above photo was taken. I loved how easy going it was (well it was the sixties I suppose!) as there were no signs saying not to touch and you were encouraged to really explore, hence you can just see Dex's feet in the above photo as he plonked himself down in the living room to watch the TV which was showing flemish programmes from the 60s. Anyhoo it was really interesting and is well worth a visit.

When I realised how close we were to the Maasmechelen shopping village I managed to persuade hubby to go there before heading home which meant for quite a late return but it's the holidays and was so worth it! I've been wanting to visit for a while as there is a Nike outlet store and it was so much cheaper than anywhere else, so I was quite happy!