1936 On the Continent

and whether he feels any better. Fortunately, the doctors are accustomed to this sort of thing and don’t get offended.
    But surely you must have read the pages that your genial Dickens wrote about this town where he spent some time, as a visitor, I hasten to add.
Spa and the Ardennes
    We’re on the way to Spa.
    This is where the Garden of Belgium begins: Spa and the Ardennes. But Spa deserves a special visit.
    “Do you know, Muriel, that in the days when travelling was a great adventure and a greater luxury, Spa was already a famous holiday health resort? Its mineral water existed as early as the twelfth century, and authors of the eighteenth century often mentioned this town in their writings: Voltaire, Sheridan, Grimm, and Casanova have written about it in glowing terms. This is how Spa came to be called ‘the country House of the Fashionable People of the World.’ It was also called the Miniature Europe. The fact alone that its name should have become the general term for resorts possessing mineral springs is abundant proof of its ancient glory and fame.”
    “Naturally, it is the first watering-place in the world?”
    “Well, I’m sorry, my dear, but it is the oldest anyway, and you must come and see for yourself what a charming spot it is.”
    The town itself is small and not of great architectural interest. Gathered together in its centre are the baths, the Kursaal and the theatre, but at a very short distance from these rise the great wooded hills from which lead numerous and delightful walks. There is a very beautiful park where concerts are given at almost every hour of the day.
    Spa lies at the bottom of a great cup rimmed by the hills, even so it is 260 metres above sea-level; some of the hills attain 400 metres, and the “Signal de Botrange” (the highest point in Belgium) is 715 metres above sea-level.
    This will show that the air is healthy enough there. No factories mar the landscape save the one where the mineral waters are bottled. There is a distillery in the town itself, and wooden objects are carved in the curious grey Spa wood—very ridiculous and plain most of these objects are (paper-cutters, pencil-cases, etc.)—which are sold to the tourist, and which are to be found in every shop in the town. Despite this, the only real souvenir you can take away with you on leaving Spa is the memory of its glorious scenery and the rather insipid taste of its mineral springs, containing iron and sulphur, which are excellent cures for anaemia and heart troubles.
    It is in a spot beloved by the fashionable as well as by the tourist. Its Kursaal, with its gambling rooms—always open—has a fine theatre and concert room, a tea-room and dance floor, and reading and drawing rooms.
A Cure for Everything
    As to the thermal establishment, it is remarkable for variety of treatments. Even if you are not following any especial treatment, it should be visited. You will see the different cabins for the carbo-gaseous baths (against hypertension, arterio-sclerosis, heart trouble or angina), and the turf baths (against rheumatic affections). All the necessary medical services are provided, as well as the indispensable medical apparatus, and more than one swimming pool and Turkish bath, etc.
    Another bathing pool in the open, called the “Piscine Fleurie,” is not very far from the centre of the town, and fine exhibitions of swimming are given there.
    You will put up at the Hôtel de Laeken, which is in the heart of the town, or, if a 200-metre climb doesn’t scare you, “chez Annete et Lubin,” a hotel situated in the hills.
    Around Spa there are plenty of interesting walks, details of which can easily be obtained on the spot. There is a golf course, several tennis courts, a hippodrome, or pigeon shooting for those to whom this barbarous sport appeals.
    In short, but for this, a delightful spot, where every pleasure is provided in surroundings incomparably beautiful. There are many strangers in Spa and, at the present moment, a large colony of German Jews.
The Ardennes
    Spa is the pearl of the Ardennes, but all around it and far to the south stretch the Ardennes.
    From Spa it will be quite easy to make use of the frequent autocar (charabanc) services leading to the nearest beauty spots in the Ardennes: the Barrage of the Gileppe, the Grottoes of Remouchamps, the Cascade of Coo, the Baraque Michel, the Fagne country.
    And, this accomplished, you should settle in another part of the country, at Dinant for