birthday ride at spa 🇧🇪: gravel bikes, forest trails & a huge bathroom

i turned 31 and celebrated with a surprise birthday trip to spa, belgium, filled with cycling, cozy stays and spontaneous food stops.

we kicked things off with a quick drive from aachen, germany, after renting a car and loading up our two gravel bikes. just 30 minutes later we arrived in the ardennes and immediately hit the trails. the terrain around spa was much hillier than we’re used to in the netherlands but absolutely stunning.

we stayed at villa de noailles, a charming old house near spa’s city center with an unusually massive bathroom featuring a sauna and bathtub. for dinner we visited le petit gourmet, where we had pizza and a shrimp salad. later we drove to verviers for dessert from a turkish place since everything in spa had already closed.

the next day we went for another ride. some of the trails were so steep they felt more suited to mountain bikes but the scenery made it all worth it. for breakfast we tried our luck back in spa but ended up back in verviers. coffee beanz ignored us so we crossed the street to darcis chocolatier and had a lovely meal there.

this was a short but unforgettable trip full of surprises and views. if you’re near the belgian-german border and looking for a quick nature getaway, spa is definitely worth a visit.

___

edited with:
capcut on macOS

videos recorded with:
iphone 16 pro

background audio:
generated with suno

___

#spabelgium #cyclingadventures #gravelbiking #birthdaytrip #travelshorts #aachentospabrussels #ardennesviews #belgiumtravel #shorttrips #biketravel #lepetitgourmet #verviersfood #villadenoailles

___

hi there, my name is ferkan. i’m based in the hague (the netherlands). i create videos of my life that consists of travels, cycling, coffee, cooking, renovations and any other random things inspire me, are funny or weird. if you like my videos and subscribe, i like you.

You turned 31? No, 15. so yes I turned 31 this month and my wife surprised me by doing a trip to Spa in Belgium so for the weekend we rented a car and took both of our gravel bikes with us and we first drove to my in laws who live in Aachen and from there on it was only a 30 minute ride to Spa and we immediately uh took our bikes and started cycling in the afternoon uh we first drove uh on the road and then after that entered the forest I immediately realized that even for me it’s quite struggling being used to all of these flat roads in the Netherlands and then suddenly having all of these hills with a huge incline it was very difficult and very challenging to say at least uh but then of course going down was much easier and also on the road it was doable uh but nonetheless a really beautiful scenery in spa I never heard of this place before and I even didn’t even know that the drinks that we know in the Netherlands Spa Blauw and Spa Rood is coming from this village and in Belgium and also that was so close to Aachen like literally 30 minute (car) ride and it’s so beautiful you see so many people cycling running walking it’s a really beautiful scenery and I definitely recommend everyone going there at least once if you have the time regarding the stay my wife uh booked us a stay at a place called Villa de Noailles the owner uh received us was a very nice owner and it was a very charismatic old villa location was really great it was very close to the city centre of spa although it had this very absurdly huge bathroom like I’ve never said this before that a bathroom can be too big but it was yeah randomly very big with this electric sauna and this bathtub which was really nice in the evening we went uh to grab some dinner uh we went to eat at Le Petit Gourmet quite decent pizza and this shrimp salad they have it was really nice did a little bit of sightseeing and then went looking for a dessert we couldn’t find anything so we went to Verviers and went to this Turkish place and got some dessert after that the next day we cycled a little bit more and also realized that some of these roads are really really steep so you’ll need a mountain bike for that so in total we only stayed about 1/2 day in spa one night but it was really amazing really great finally we wanted to get some breakfast or lunch at spa but all of the places were closed so we decided to go to Verviers (again) and we saw a place called Coffee Beanz (with a Z) it was terrible we got ignored by all of the people working there so instead we went to a place across called Darcis Chocolatier and had quite nice food there so that was our short trip to spa in Belgium hope you enjoyed it See you in the next one. Ciao ciao… Bye bye…