Begijnhof Congreshotel Leuven

It didn't seem to want to stop raining the whole day, but I was quite lucky as my super nice host, Nadine, drove me around most of Bruxelles in her car. We visited the huuuge Atomium, which was for a world conference back in 1958 or so, the Mannekin **** (little boy who pees, which is quite small), and lots of other good stuff.

We had some super good fries at a really old corner stop famous for it's fries ...

... of the river. Finally, we arrive back at Stuttgart, jump on the S-Bahn to Plochingen and the train back to Wernau. Once there, we settle down to beverages, coffee and mineral water and wait for the rest of our party to join us. Mitch and I then head back to our living quarters to get organized for our departure the next day. The 15th: Lots of hugs and "good-byes" as Mitch and I leave Colin with his dad for their time together. And now to Mitch's entry....

... nothing but sit straight down in the arena where we had watched Radiohead. The muddy fields had made sitting difficult without being covered in filth, so we had spent 13 hours or so constantly standing still. Our feet ached, and as the masses exited the field, we found a couple of abandoned plastic ponchos which would act as a perfect shield between mud and bottom. The site was a ...

... happy little campers as we quickly put the cash back in our wallets and went in before they changed their minds. As to be expected, the ruins in Athens are amazing, the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Ancient Agora etc etc. Even more mind blowing then Olympia. When you connect all of the sites across the city up, it is amazing to see. At the moment there is a lot of restoration work going on at all of the sites as there is across all of the city in ...

We are all getting up a little earlier. Even Emma was up by 9:30 this morning. Abigail and I went to the local bakery (about 2.5 blocks away) and picked up some yummy pastries for breakfast. It is a gray and rainy day but we thought we would head out anyways and maybe go to the flea market. It rained a little bit off and on at the beginning of our day. The kids were initially a little concerned about this but then luckily they found ...

... to eat. She made us kebabs, several kids of sausages, and chicken drumsticks, along side quartered tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots sticks and lettuce. The kids ate like mad. I was so excited. They are usually good eaters, but you never know when you are in a strange place. They played and laughed and ran through the hedge mazes in the garden. After dinner they hunted for snails (Schnecken in German and slak in Dutch) with Henry. When we got home I remarked to Jonathan after ...

... We got there right as the sun was setting and night was settling in and it looked gorgeous. After that we met Karen at Place St. Catherine (the old Brussels port) for dinner at a famous fish restaurant, Vismet. While we were there, the director of the Brussels modern art museum was there filming part of a promotional video which we were asked to be in! We're famous! It was a promo video about all the Brussels "hot spots" enjoyed ...

... Thorn Tree. d. booking the flight and ordering the visa Booking a plane was a piece of cake thanks to the numerous web sites that give you an overview of the ticket prices. We chose Billiger Fliegen because we had some good experiences with them last year. Claudia booked her visa through the net, I just downloaded the paper and went there personally.

... to have chocolate, escargot (snail) soup and Waffels all before 1100. Sad goodbye to Jill at the station, it was lovely catching up and every one will meet her next year when she visits us. Back to the hotel to meet the tour group at a welcoming drink. Then off again to explore the city - have the most wonderful meal for 11 Euro then to organise ourselves for the 18 day bus travel ahead of us.

... expect to see anywhere from Morocco to Turkey to Afghanistan, from rugs to hookahs to Qu’rans. Next day I’ve still got to kill time until my night ride, so take a day trip out to Bruges on the recommendation of a friend. It has the distinction of being intact after WWII, so plenty of nice architecture, but nothing you couldn’t see somewhere else