Is Durbuy, Belgium Really the Smallest City in the World?

Did you know that the smallest city in the world is located in Belgium? Yeah, we didn't either. Hey, good morning. Welcome to the smallest city in the world. We are in Derby, Belgium. The smallest city in the world. Allegedly. It's super cute though. It's a little town, city, village. We interchange those words a lot. No, no, no. They call themselves a city. They've got city rights in 1331 and they are not giving those up. They are a city. The smallest city in the world. How many times are you going to say that? It's true. That's the whole gimmick here. It's true. Welcome to Derby. When we heard there was the smallest city in the world within about a three and a half hour drive of us, except for traffic, we jumped on it. We came down here. We're kind of in Southern Belgium, almost to France. Closer to Luxembourg too. Are we? Yeah. So this is actually in the province of Luxembourg in Belgium still. A little confusing. Definitely the French speaking part of the country. Definitely. Yeah. This city actually only has like 278 residents in it. That's like nobody. They've like combined with neighboring provinces and municipalities. So technically it has like 11,000 people here, but for this all intents and purposes, we are just this 278 inhabited city. So we stopped in a really cute cafe. The city is not that large. So we pretty much walked one into the other to find this cafe. They have a really cute outside patio, which is where we're at right now. It's like just an old house that was turned into a restaurant and they have breakfast and I'm very excited for my kind of breakfast sandwich. So I know technically this is not breakfast, but I feel like anything that has an egg on it is breakfast. So let's enjoy our breakfast. You did get breakfast. You got pancakes. With not enough syrup in mine. What a cute little city. Don't do that. It is still city. I know. So like, you know, give it that. What a cute little city. It is a very cute city. Derby used to actually be fortified city. So it had like walls surrounding the city, which I mean, the city's not that big, but, and it also was an important trading city. So like, what did they trade? They traded leathers, like tanned leathers and other textiles. Oh, very nice. But all that stuff faded. And So they kind of count on people like us walking around and seeing their tiny city. Apparently there is a Michelin star restaurant here in Derby. So Nate just told me that an actual Michelin star has this like little flower up here, which I have some problems with that because it should be a star. If you're going to give it a star, it should be a star. I also have a problem that there's the Michelin man. That's where it came from. I know, but it's like, this is such a, like a prestigious, like award that you get that you work like your entire lives for something like this. And then we're going to put like the Stay Puft, like marshmallow dude on there. It's their list. I know. But like, does he need to be on that? Like put a tire or something. They created it though. Good for them, but they don't need to put like the little guy on it. It just, to me, it like takes down from the prestige of it because now there's a marshmallow guy on there. We're going on this little train. It apparently takes you all around town, which should take about three minutes, 10 euros per person. It reminds me of Lichtenstein. So apparently small places like little trains. That's what my takeaway is. Welcome aboard. Today, we're taking you on a fascinating journey through the smallest town in the world. Make yourself comfortable as we defy time together. Cobblestone. As we're going by people, I sort of feel like an animal in a cage. I think they feel sorry for him. All right, we're at the top of the hill above the town of Derbouy. A little 10 minute stop off the train. There's a tower. I think you can climb that. We should probably do that really quick and get an even better view. So we do that. We climb towers. We sometimes do. This is not a tall tower, but it is on a tall hill. So call it a small tower, small tower on a tall hill. It's a little tight in here, but at least the steps are like concrete. They're easy to walk up. Unlike some steps we've been on in the past. We can literally see the entire city from up here. It's very picturesque, very like a storybook. The train driver drives like an animal. There's a ton of little restaurants and cafes and shops down here in the main part of the city. Fancy restaurants. I mean some fancy restaurants and we're definitely not fancy. This was like touristy shops and stuff too, but like it's very quaint and has like a small town vibe city. So we needed to eat again already after that long train ride. So we got a sugar waffle that she put back onto the iron for us and heated up. We're having a debate if this is a Liège waffle that has like the little like sugar crystals in it or if it's a Brussels, not a Brussels waffle because that doesn't have it. Either way it looks really good. It's warm, sun's coming out. Waffles, Belgium. I mean like it's probably really cliche, but you know very sweet. A lot of people get it like with ice cream or whipped cream or chocolate or whatever. I'm kind of a purist. I just like it plain. We're in this local shop here. It's called a confiture. Confiture? It means jam, jelly, jam. Share and enjoy. They also have local specialties like beer and wine. And breads and cookies and sweets and tea. I was saying that like there's no bakery here and I think this is like the substitute for a bakery because there's a lot of like cookies and cakes and treats and candy. We've been walking around all day and I keep asking when are we gonna go see the oldest thing in the world. We're here. It's you know not really the oldest thing in the world but it is 390 million years old. Even when you say that I'm like no that's not real. It's a long time ago. But it is because it took a very long time to be formed too. What are we looking at? This is in geological terms an anticline. An anticline. It refers to when like layers of the earth get merged together and they create almost like a little rainbow. It's like pressure pushes stuff up. Yeah you know tectonic plates and all that cool stuff that happens underneath the surface of the earth and eventually comes up here. Locally what do they call it? They said something on our train tour. It was like the La Felice or A La Felice. They call it two different things. So they call it an Amelius rock which is named after the geologist back in the 1800s that first started talking about this. And then it's also called a Rocher a la Felice which basically Felice means cliff or like rock face in French. And so that's kind of like a local term what they call it here. It's starting to rain on us. Like a lot of rain. Like more rain than I'm comfortable with. What a cool town though. Like I love this town. Do you? I do. I love it. There's a river, there's bridges, there's a castle. You can't go in but we'll show you the castle. It's one of the cutest towns I've ever been in. There's actually more tourists here than I even thought that there would be. Like who else knows about this town? Apparently people from Belgium and France. That's very true. Yeah I've heard very little English. A lot of Dutch. A lot of Dutch. Yeah a lot of Dutch. There's like bitterballen in the restaurants too. There is, yeah. No thanks. Hey Katrina. Yeah. There's a castle. There is a castle that we can't go in. Can't climb any towers. We just have to admire it from the river down here. That's what I'm doing. The original castle on that site actually dates back to 900. The year 900. As with most stuff on our vlog, things have been destroyed and rebuilt throughout the years. So in the 1700s they started to rebuild this one up here. There's a count that lives in there right now so we can't. A Dracula? Yeah. Where have you brought me Katrina? We're gonna see some trees that have been transformed into shapes of animals and all kinds of things. It's called a topiary? Topiary park. I've never been to a topiary park. You know a topiary is like the term for like manicured trees. I don't think I knew that. But now I do. Yeah so let's go see some. Katrina I'd like to point something out. What? On a lot of the signage in this city they call themselves the world's smallest town not city. What's up with that? I've noticed that and like which one is it you guys? Because when we interchange the two terms on this vlog we get a lot of messages about it's not a town it's a city and vice versa. It's a village. It's a this. It's a whatever. Are you a city or a town? I would say city because that's like what it was built as but. Looks like a town to me. But you're using town. This is confusing to people like us. Topiary garden. Topiary garden. Do you remember in Alice in Wonderland when the Queen of Hearts goes through and she's painting her roses red? No but I remember in Alice in Wonderland when the Mandalorian comes in to save the day. I think that was an addition. We got this piece of paper for the topiary park that tells you what each one of these trimmings topiaries is and this is Alice in Wonderland which I get it because of like the heart and the club but Mandalorian is confusing. There's 250 topiaries throughout this garden and I think like also like this means that it's like a topiary you know because it's like an antiquary and some of these trees have to grow for over a year or longer before they can like trim them into a certain shape or something and oh now that I'm looking behind you it actually looks kind of cool. I thought it was kind of small when we first came in but like this is kind of neat. This is a woman in her bath and her companion next to her. I like that the companion has like a little umbrella made out of a tree like that's really cute. You got to have some vision to be able to see just like a tree or a bush and be like I'm going to make that into like a figure right? You okay bro? I shook my head for my hair and then I fell. You got dizzy. We've saved the best for last. It's the elephant. The elephant's the best. It's last. I could have predicted the elephant would be the best. How about you? Uh yeah and it's I don't know it looks playful and happy and then there's a little giraffe not to scale obviously and then I think the kangaroo is kind of cool. Did you see the kangaroo? Kangaroo can come in second place. Elephant wins. I would agree with that. Beautiful little relaxing town, city, whatever we're going to call it. Smallest in the world out here. I'm going to call it a city because that's what they originally called it so yes gorgeous, quaint, cozy. Love it. Love it. All right we found something last night when we got to town that we thought was interesting and we wanted to show you friendly viewers so we're on our way there right now. I've discovered one of the coolest things I think I've ever seen. We came in actually last night to find like a water and there's this self-vending area in here. They have a vending machine where you can get alcohol. I know that some places in Japan and Germany they have it. I have never seen it quite like this though. You're really excited about this. I'm very excited about this and so now I'm going to put it to the test and see if it works. I don't know. It's all touchscreen. Are those bottles going to drop? There's a bottle of Jack Daniels in there. That's what I don't understand. Is it going to get fuzzy? Does this come up? Obviously it's not going to drop because most of them are glass bottles. That's why we're going to test it out and see if it's worth the probably too much money that we're going to pay for one of these. I think you'd find it on here first. That is French and I cannot understand. Okay, add to cart. Check out. That's it. That's all you need. What stops a child from coming in here and getting a beer? That's my thing. In the U.S., it would never happen. Okay, watch. Here it comes. It's happening. It's all happening. Which one did you buy? I went with the Derby Blanc because it's like a local beer. Oh, no. Fail. What? Oh, it is very cold. Oh, that's a huge fail. It wasn't horrible. It didn't drop it down, but just that, like, come on. But it's very, very cold. Look at that. I got beer from a vending machine. I could be a child. I'd rather have ice cream. So this was five euros. That's actually, I don't think, terrible for something like this for the convenience. This ice cream bar was, what, 350? I think I made the right choice. I'm going to use that to make s'mores. Uh, chocolate? Like, um, or marshmallows? I don't even know. We found chocolate-covered marshmallows, and we're going to sample a couple of them. I can't figure out what flavor that is. Yeah, I think it's, I want to say pineapple because I think these are all fruits. And those might be the same red. They're not labeled, so it's questionable. That soap shop was super cute. We don't really use solid soap, so I think we both decided we didn't really need a soap dish. But I feel like all the shops here are perfect. Like, if you need gifts for people, it's, like, everything is just, like, super perfectly packaged and just, like, so adorable. I want to buy it all. But, yeah, I digress. It's dinner time, Katrina. There's actually more restaurants here than I thought there was going to be. There's actually a lot more here than I thought there'd be in the smallest city in the world. Including people, actually. It's pretty busy. It's a holiday weekend. It's a holiday weekend, and it's, I mean, they market this as a tourist place, so. Oh, you think the big sign over there says tourism? Hey, Katrina. Hey, Nate. I think that was our day in the smallest city in the world, Dubuid. I think there was actually quite a few things to do here. I was surprised. Oh, no, absolutely. It's a great weekend getaway. This place is really fun. It's nice. Didn't seem so hidden today. Well, you know. A little busy, but that was okay. It means we found the right place. There's a pirate bar back here. Tortuga Bar, which, in my head, is Turtle Bar, because Tortuga, in Spanish, is turtle, but it's pirate bar. Tortuga is a city or an island, I think, that was, like, pirate associated. Sketchy facts here. We're gonna go into a pirate bar. Are we gonna hang out the rest of the night in a pirate bar? Yeah. They're open until 1 a.m., so let's go. Oh, man. Well, we're not gonna take you with us, friend. You're done. That's all you get. But add this to your list. Thanks for watching. We're gonna stay in Belgium. We'll see you next week from another great city here in a great country of Belgium. Thanks for watching. More chocolate, more fries, more all of it. Bye.