On Tuesday, we looked at our calendar and the coming weekend was the only time until the end of March that we were both in Europe and didn't have any scheduled social commitments. It's funny, when we lived in Indy our social calendar was never as full as it is now. I'm not sure if that's because we are newly "empty nesters" and so we hadn't had the opportunity to fellowship with our stateside friends, or if maybe no one in the Indy area loves us….
We decided on Belgium. It's only about a 4 hour drive, which meant we could get there on Friday night, return Sunday evening and David wouldn't need to take any vacation days. Wednesday morning I got online and booked our hotels and spent some time researching the tourism websites for both Brussels and Ghent. I had some things in mind and consulted with David to see what he'd be interested in seeing. Thursday I finalized our plan and started the task of mapping out our visit.
Friday I had to take David to work so that I could have the car. Guess what wasn't working on Friday? Our elevator. I think it has a sixth sense about our travel plans and decides to go kaput whenever luggage is required. Luckily, we were only staying two nights, so two small bags were easy to carry down the 5 flights of stairs.
Traffic was HORRIBLE. I remember our first winter in the Indianapolis area. I was driving the kids to school one morning after receiving about 3 inches of snow. Traffic was gridlocked at every turn. People were absolutely CREEPING along the streets. All I could think was, "What the heck? C'mon people, you live in the FLATEST place in the Midwest! Get your thumb outta your….." oops, never mind. I mean really, they weren't driving on I-75 through the cut in the hill in Northern Kentucky, we were on streets that were completely LEVEL.
It had rained here all day Friday. Rain in Strasbourg is equal to snow in Indianapolis. My 15 minute commute to pick up David at his plant took me 50 minutes. Then we had to drive those same 12 miles BACK to head north to Belgium. Our 2 hour drive to Luxembourg City took 3 1/2 hours. Fortunately, we had a tapas restaurant that we wanted to try and weren't attempting to make our way into Brussels on Friday.
Could we have made some of that traffic jam time up by going a few kph (kilometers per hour) over the posted speed limit? Yes. However, you probably don't want to do that in Europe. David has already gotten 4 speeding tickets since he has lived here. Now, that might shock some of you, especially since I call him grandpa when he's behind the wheel.
He received his first ticket while talking to me on his way home from a business dinner. That happened in France. His second ticket happened in Switzerland (where the speed limit can go from 120 to 80 in less than 500m) and he was going 10 km over. (That's a whopping 6 mph)
His third ticket we didn't know about for several months. He was ticketed for going 3 km (1.8 mph) over the posted speed while we were in Corsica last May. David had given his US drivers license at the rental car company and the ticket took awhile to show up at our US address.
His latest ticket, and perhaps the most absurd, he received when Lisa was here and we were visiting the Christmas market in Colmar. We were driving down the street and suddenly saw a flash of light. You see, police don't ticket you in Europe, it's all camera generated. I said, oh golly, did you just get a ticket? He said, I don't think so…I'm only going 54. Well, he was wrong. We received the 90 Euro ticket in the mail just last week. He was ticketed for going a whopping ONE km over the posted speed limit. Mind you, ONE km is only .6 mph. Now, we could've appealed, but if you don't pay the ticket within 15 days your fine goes from 90 Euro to 185 Euro. If your tickets goes unpaid (even when being appealed) for more than 30 days the fine jumps up to 375 Euro. All this for less than 1 mph over the speed limit….that's my husband, he's a crazy driver alright!
Speaking of CRAZY men, let's jump back to Belgium. I was checking email and FB on Friday before we left and noticed a blurb on the right column of my FB homepage. Something about "Belgium terror raids and jihadists shot". WHAT THE HECK?? I clicked on the link and read about the raid and saw that the city of Verviers was just a short 70 miles southeast of Brussels.
Well, darn it, France and Germany were having riots/demonstrations because of the latest Charlie Hebdo edition hitting the newsstands, their military/police were making their presence known on the streets. We decided to pray for traveling mercies and continue on our trip. Now, I will tell you this, we DID NOT tell our families that we were going until we arrived and saw that things were calm. I did, however, get several texts after I posted where we were. "Don't you watch the news?" "Didn't you hear about the jihadists that were killed in Belgium?" You get the gist.
We thoroughly enjoyed Belgium. We had perfect (albeit cold) weather in Brussels on Saturday. We were able to hit most of the top touristy things and enjoy some of our favorite Belgique food…pomme frittes! (No, we did NOT try any mussels…not our sort of food)
Sunday we headed to Ghent. The weather was not cooperative. We arrived early in the morning and encountered rain and temps in the mid 30s. We were able to enjoy The Castle of the Counts and St Nicholas Church, but several other items on our list were either closed for the season (opening in March) or were closed during lunch. We settled on trying a Bicky Burger (deep fried hamburger patty) along with some more french fries.
The highlight of my day was experiencing my first Belgian waffle. It was ooey and gooey, hot off the griddle and absolutely amazing. I was happy that I waited until we were ready to leave to try one….otherwise, I surely would've had two or three.
This past Friday we were lucky enough to help our friend Matt celebrate his birthday. He had a basketball game the next night, so he didn't eat anything and only drank water….let's just say he was the ultimate "cheap date". Fortunately, Brittney helped us eat the mountain of food that we ordered.
I have never done this before, and I hope my sister-in-law won't mind. (It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission, right??) I'd like to ask each of you who reads this post to say a special prayer for our nephew Sam this week. (While he has severe autism, to me, he is not defined by his disability, but by his special place in our family) He is getting his wisdom teeth extracted on Thursday (Jan 29th) and it will not be an easy appointment OR an easy recovery for him or his mom. I know that God is in control, but if you could just lift Sam and his family up in your prayers I would be grateful. Wishing you all a blessed week filled with the people that you love.
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