Ghent & Brugge

Everyday this vacation has been a wonderful, fun and marvelous experience. Today we can add educational. We visited one of the oldest places we have ever been too and will most likely go in a long, long time. We saw buildings constructed in the 1400 and 1500's with profound rich history.
We started out our day with breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien, an awsome way to start the day. All organic ingredients including fruits, breads and hot chocolate. We had been to the restaurant with the same name in Pasadena, and since the day we ate there, decided that we would try out the one in Brussels where the original chain started. One more thing to check off paces to visit on our to do list before we die! :-)
In Ghent we spend a short period of time but had the opportunity to visit an old cathedral, St. Ann's it had so much opulence and detail it was truly an enriching experience. It even had a statue of Mary and baby Jesus, created by Michael Angelo.
We spent the afternoon in a place recommended by a coworker /friend in Los Angeles. Well worth our time! (Thanks for that Cynthia). Brugges is such a beautiful place, almost like something you would see in Disneyland, but better; and no Mickey anywhere around.
We took a small boat ride around swans and amazingly impressive houses surrounded the canal as we rode.
Tomorrow we go to Amsterdam, once again we look forward to a day of fun and excitement (we are staying in the family friendly side of townof course). We will let you know how we liked it at night when we return from our day trip.
Hasta manana...
Au revoir!

Foreigners

Today was another day of intense stimulus. We started out the morning heading to Luxembourg, stopping at some caves about 2 hrs. from Brussels. We walked about 2 hours underneath a mountain and then got on a boat that led us to the outside again. Wow! What an experience!
We proceeded to our destination which was an extremely clean and orderly country. Nice calm
place because it was Sunday. We had the opportunity to visit a very old cathedral which was a peaceful experience in it by itself.
On our way back to Brussels our tour bus stopped in Dinant (where the creator of the

Saxophone was born) it was also a very cute, quaint little town of about 13,000 people right on the river Meuse.
When we returned to Brussels at about 8:00 p.m. the final European soccer game was taking place. Spain vs Germany, normally we don't even know who is playing and who even wins, HOWEVER, this time we got stuck in the the Grand Place (The main tourist square) as the game was ending. Spain had won and we could tell!! Many brawls, people inebriated, fights and crazy behavior as a result of a team winning!? We got stuck inside a little souvenir store as people started throwing bottles and fighting about who knows what because they were arguing in French. Well even if we did speak the language I suppose we would not have understood the slurring and what seemed like impaired speech.
Well I guess we have learned from this experience, no more going out when there is a soccer final in Europe! Thank goodness we are safe and sound now in our hotel. We are now just listening to the honking of horns of happy Spaniards that seem to have won the European Lottery! At least something makes them very very happy!

Houffalize

Today we drove to meet our friends Luc & Anita (and their children) in the countryside about one hour from Brussels. It was the most Picturesque town we have seen in a long time (the closest we had ever seen is perhaps Solvang) this however was a whole lot better and different.
Luc's grandfather lives there so we visited with his grandfather and his wife for a short while then we enjoyed eating at a local place Belgium Fries, which is the same as French Fries but people from Belgium claim they invented the French Fries so they are really not "French Fries". We have had to practice our single phrase that we know in French, sometimes successfully often times not.
The weather continues to be on the cool side but today we had rain, wind, sunshine and everything in between it was between 58 f.- 64 f. which is cool by our standards.
Tomorrow we travel early to Luxembourg on a day trip, we hope to log on at night once again to share our day.

Our very long flight

We finally arrived in Belgium after a very long flight. We left Los Angeles at 8:50 a.m (on time) and arrived in Philadelphia at 4:10 p.m. (local time). There was originally a 3 hr. layover but it turned out to be more like a 5 hour stop. So we arrived in Belgium at 11:15 a.m. local time (which is around 2:00 a.m. California time). We were very fortunate to have our friends Luc and Anita meet us at the airport which was a huge blessing. Although we had not slept very much all night we decided that we would take advantage of the company of our friends and tour some of Brussels. We had lunch with them at a local cafe and then went to visit The Grand Place, The Mannequin Pis, and downtown Brussels. We refueled our bodies with Belgium waffles with Belgium covered chocolate and strawberries to which Alec was not complaining! The weather here is kind of cool and drizzly, but not to cold. We will tour the countryside today with our friends and hopefully log on tomorrow morning to keep you all informed of our day.

The Day Before

We are leaving in just a few hours and we are still not completely done packing. We hope to leave and make it on time to the airport by 6:00 A.M.