Jenni and John Guest Post #4 (they are making my job easy!)

Finale in Belgium

Friday night we were back with Matt and went to Brussels for dinner and to see the Mannequin Pis and Main Square.  The waffle shops smelled amazing.  Matthew took us to a few of his favorite bars, we didn’t have too much time because we needed to make sure we caught the last train to Brussels.  Saturday morning we decided to go to Antwerp for the day.  We knew we had to catch the 9:28am train…and for some reason we were still at the hotel at 9:15am.  We parked at the station at 9:27am…and started running.  Of course Matthew and John sped off in front of me, and just as I got to the bottom of the stairs (to go up) I heard the buzzers for the doors.  I heard John say ‘hurry’…Matthew was holding the doors open – which is not really allowed, and we squeezed on.  We plopped down and of course the guy came to check our tickets, which we didn’t buy because we didn’t have time.  So we had to pay extra on the train, but it was worth it to not have to sit around and wait 20-30 minutes.  I think it took us most of the trip there to get our breath back!

Antwerp was very cool, we walked around for awhile, had lunch, walked some more and then it started to rain so we decided to head back to the train station. It was a steady cold rain, and thankfully the only real rain we had to deal with.  When we boarded the train, the three of us were quickly falling asleep.  There was a lady sitting next to Matthew (the train was packed) and as he started to fall asleep his arm twitched and he pushed his water into her lap.  It was hilarious…in fact I am laughing right now as I type this.  We laughed about that the whole way home.  Saturday night we stopped at the grocery store to buy some beverages and then went to dinner in Aalst. We were missing two key ingredients: 1. a refrigerator and 2. a bottle opener.  We used the window sill as our refrigerator and after trying several methods, John resorted to using tweezers to pry off the bottle caps on the beer.

Caption: Look at that concentration!

Sunday was our last day in Belgium, and the first day we were out the door when Matthew wanted us to be! We were out the door by 8am and off to Oostende, which is a small town on the North Sea.  Just as we were getting there the sun was coming up.  It was a beautiful sunny day.  We had breakfast and then spent some time on the beach, walking out on the wave breakers. It was really cool.  Seemed unimaginable that we were that close to an ocean.  What was the best part of Oostende???  I BOUGHT BOOTS!  Very exciting for me, they just don’t make shoes here like you can find over there.  After walking through Oostende we drove over to Fort Napoleon – a fort built to protect from the British. We then went to Gent, and caught a few hours of sunlight there too.  There were some people protesting on the street in a bathtub – really cold for that!  We took lots of pictures, and then toured the castle in Gent.  It was really cool…got to climb up on the roof and in the towers (which made Matthew happy). 

Captions:
Top - Pic of us from one of the roofs
Middle - FINALLY ON A ROOF!!
Bottom - One of the amazing views from a ROOF.

After that we had dinner and headed back to Aalst to pack. 
We had a great time in Europe – we enjoyed everywhere we went – even with the cold and snow.  We would love to come back when it is warmer and the patios are open!