Picnic at the Deeping's Park

We were in dyer need of food in our house after being gone for 4 days.  So I loaded up the kids to get a few things from the grocery store and as I got a block down the road I thought that it was way too nice out.  A picnic would sure be good to along with our shopping, so I drove back home and threw together a quick picnic.  We drove up to the Tesco in Market Deeping because there is a really great park across the road.  We did a 30 minute shop and after putting my cold stuff in the few little coolers I had, we headed to the park.

Here are my two kiddos having a blast in the swings and you can see the Tesco right behind them.  Harrison got all decked out in CAT gear today.  He got to wear the onesie and hat that Kevin got for Addison when she was little.  We had a great time and had the whole park to ourselves for about an hour.

A Walk in the Park

On our last day in Brussels we did a "tour" the parks in town since we owed the kids a slow day.  Right behind our hotel was the Park du Palais d'Egmont.  We had been just passing through it the past few days, so today we took a closer look.  We found the Peter Pan statue which is a replica of the one in Hyde Park in London.

We did a little souvenir shopping and found this little gem of a place making the real Belgium waffels.  The site of these babies gave us cravings to get one of our own for lunch.

Kevin picked up some sandwiches for us at a little place and met up with the kids and I near some park benches.  As I was sitting waiting for Kevin, there was this guy across the way just laying on a bench and he appeared to be sleeping when I first sat down our on our side.  Once Kevin got to us he started staring at us.  I was a little creeped out when he wouldn't stop, but the big clincher was when he stood up, turned away from us and started to urinate out in the open.  Kevin and I immediately started packing up our picnic.  Addison wasn't too happy that we were taking away her French fries and strawberry covered waffle.  I had to explain very quickly that sometimes mommy and daddy get scared like when she gets scared of things and that when mommy and daddy get scared in a different place away from home that she needs to be a super good girl and listen to us.  Crazy thing happened after that....the little park we moved to had a mom who just whipped down her little boys pants and let him wee right their in the middle of it all.  Kevin and I were beginning to wonder if public urination was legal in Belgium....

After eating we headed out for a big long walk to Parc de Bruxelles (Brussels Park) where we got the kids to fall asleep for an afternoon nap.  The park was really big and the big thing we noticed was how dirty it seemed to be.  There was litter everywhere and it just seemed very untidy.  This fountain looked pretty from afar but the water was so gross.  

 
We kept on walking a mile or so down from the park to the site of the European Parliament.  Brussels is home to the "capitol" of Europe and over 1/3 of Brussels' residents work for the EU parliament.  There are 160 embassies in Brussels and the city is home to over 2500+ diplomats from all over Europe.

We carried on a bit more and we found the honeypot of places in Brussels - Parc du Cinquantenaire.  It was a huge, beautiful park with this amazing triumph arch at the far end.  Once the kids woke up we just hung out on the green and played.  It was my most favorite part of our trip. 

Addison and Harrison were both feeling good and smiling and playing with each other.  I got Addison to race me back and forth on the green and taught her how to get down in a starting block position and to say "Ready, Steady, Go."

Addie is such a curious cat and intrigued by Kevin's and my glasses.  She wanted to play with my glasses so we put the on her.  She looks so studious.  Poor thing is probably going to end up with glasses some day...at least we know she'll be an intellectual looking cutie.

Well, after a long few days we headed home with some great memories and loads of Belgium chocolates.

All of Europe in Two Hours

After breakfast we took the metro out to the edge of town to see the Atomium and Mini-Europe.  The Atomium was built for the 1958 World's Fair and is a model of an iron molecule enlarged 165 million times.  It's known as the Eiffel Tower of Brussels and it is pretty amazing.

There were loads of people posing for pictures to show how they could "hold" the structure.  Today they actually had people taking rides down a rip cord from the very top.  Looked like a great thrill.

We took a little break underneath the Atomium.  My little Harrison really seemed to be growing up

After lunch we went to Mini-Europe which is a park that displays 300+ models of structures and sites all throughout Europe.  This place was soooo cool!!!

We got our pictures with the Eiffel Tower.... 

England's Parliament and Big Ben

The Acropolis from Athens

Addison with the Arc de Triomphe in Paris

Basilica Sacre Coeur in Paris

I'm holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa that is just a bit taller than me

Addie you are soooo funny!!! What a great day to see so much.  Our goal is to see as much of Europe as we can while we live in the UK and this was a great motivator for us to see the real things.

Easter Bunny Visits Brussels

Eventhough Addie and Harry were in Belgium overnight in a hotel, the Easter Bunny didn't forget them.  He left a note letting them know that Kevin and I had visited with him and asked to drop off his goodies for them at our house next Sunday.  What a cool bunny!!!  He did happen to bring a few Easter eggs with him and hid them around our hotel room.

Addison woke up with an egg right next to her.  She was so excited and hopped out of her cot to look for more. (Yes, she still gets to sleep with her passy...she does a great job of chucking it in her bed when she wakes up).

Now in Belgium because there is so much good chocolate to buy in the stores, the Easter bunny decided to bring Addison some healthier snacks like pretzels and raisins to balance things out.

We treated ourselves to waffels and tarts this morning from a little cafe just down from our "22 Euro Club Sandwich" place.  We found a quaint little park with a big fountain, statues, and loads of pretty trees to enjoy the morning.

I had this most amazing raspberry tart...it was chilled and tangy tart.  The cafe had a cookbook available with recipes for all the goodies they had but off course it was in French... darn.

In Brugge

Our Eurostar tickets entitled us to travel on to any other Belgium city within 24 hours of arriving in Brussels, so we headed to the infamous Brugge.  The quick one hour train ride was wonderful.  In fact it was so great that we thought we would accidentally sit on the first class car.  Honestly, we didn't know that we had until the conductor came through to punch our tickets.  We thought the seats seemed pretty nice and the car was awfully quite...sorry Mr. Conductor.

Brugge is a beautiful city of old filled with lovely buildings with amazing canals running through it.  It is sometimes known as the "Venice of the North."   This area seemed to be our favorite because it was quite and not as congested as the rest of the city that day.  The bridge behind Kevin leads into the Begijnhof which is a sanctuary for women to serve as nuns, but they really aren't fully nuns because they can leave at any time.

Here I am inside the middle of the Begijnhof with all the beautiful daffodils.  It's really a quaint little community of these white painted attached homes.  There are signs posted all over the place asking you to be quiet.  Well we broke the beautiful silence when I asked Addison not to play so closely to this other little girl walking around because I didn't want here to pass on the "pox"...well I should have thought of that before I drug her all the way there in the first place.  She got pretty upset with me and Kevin had to carry her out kicking and screaming.  The poor little thing...she just wanted a playmate and I told her no after Kevin had said she could get down out of the stroller to play for a while.  I could tell the stress of the week was carrying into our holiday fun.

The most relaxing and enjoyable meal we had on the whole trip happened to be lunch while in Brugge.  We sat outside at this amazing little place and people watched between eating and feeding the kids.  I had this amazing chicken while Kevin ordered a pot of steamed mussels which is a very popular dish in Belgium, especially when they are in season.  Addison again enjoyed a bowl full of French fries...do you see a trend here.

She looks sweet and angelic, but this little girl is very independent and with this pose she looks like she was ready to take over the town.  Addison did love seeing all the ducks and swans that floated in the canal.  Also there were horse drawn buggies moving throughout the town and she loved the "Neigh-neighs" as she calls them.  We tried hopping on one of the horse rides but found out that the starting point was actually in the town square so we headed up that way.

When we got to the Market Square it was a ZOO!!!  It was very, very busy and on top of things there was a huge carnival going on in the middle of things.  The most commanding landmark though is the Belford tower.  This is the infamous tower that Colin Farrel's associate tries tell the "American tourists" that they were crazy to try and climb in the movie "In Bruges" if you've seen it.  We would have loved to climb it ourselves but both kiddos zonked out just as we got to it and the cue was really long so we admired the view from the ground.

The Market Square in Brugge was very colorful with the brightly painted buildings all around.  We had a tough time finding where the horse rides started so we decided that we would opt for a canal ride instead.  

We headed off towards an area called the Burg which is just off the main market square.  Here we visited the Basilica of the Holy Blood which is the holiest of churches in Brugge.  Here there were very moving statues of Christ during his crucifixion and it really moved me.  Kevin and I took some time to reflect on the Easter holiday and lit candles at the church.

We made our way down "Blind Donkey Alley" which is just a very pretty alleyway that leads to the canal and old fish markets.  It was here where we hopped on our canal ride.  It is also where I lost the plastic eye piece on our camera...Kevin warned me several times that it was coming off and being the defiant little me I didn't pay any attention.   Not a horrible loss but my forehead really hurt by the end of the day by banging that thing on my face.

They packed us on the boat like sardines.  Which if it would have just been the two of us, it wouldn't have been that bad, but we were the only ones with two little kids who needed constant attention or they were likely to fly out the boat.  The canal cruise was pretty cool though.  One of the funniest things I remember was this big golden retriever sitting at an open window half asleep just staring out at people as we passed by without a care in the world.

Our little ones always looked so cute when they would both fall asleep in the stroller.  Actually so cute that Kevin and I should have charged people for staring at them and point.  Kevin said that if he could get 5 pence for everytime someone looked or pointed at them and the stroller he'd be a millionaire by the end of our trip.  We do have a pretty unique stroller that not a lot of people have seen and when they see Harry down below they often have to do a double take to see that there is another little one riding underneath.

We ended our day in Brugge with dinner at the place next door to where we had lunch.  Kevin got to taste some of the locally brewed beer called Brugge Zot and he liked it so much that we had to rush to find a few bottles before the shops closed.  We had some amazing pasta dishes as well.  As you can tell, food is a big part about my enjoying a trip or not.  White asparagus was in season and so I got the asparagus and salmon over penne pasta and it was delicious-o!!!  We finally got Addison to eat some spaghetti.  

We headed back to the train station and had to buy tickets back because our 24 hours had run out.  The gentleman at the Brussels train station said it would only cost 8 Euro each to come back, but he was wrong!  It wasn't a big deal in the grand sceme of things that they were 13 Euro each, but I want to know this other guy's source.

Our Trip to Brussels, Belgium

After a stressful week from the onset of chicken pox to our little Addie and Harrison having horrible symptoms of his first tooth coming through, we decided to go ahead and set forth on our adventure to Belgium.  We drove to the train station in Peterborough, then hopped on the fast train down to London and then walked across the street to London's St. Pancreas International Train Station where we took the EuroStar high speed train to Brussels, Belgium.  It was just over a 2 hour ride through southern England, under the English Channel, with a quick stop in Lille, France before we arrived in Belgium.
The kids did great on the train and it really was the most convenient means of travel I think we've done so far.  Our portable DVD player was the perfect trick to make the time go by.   When we got to Brussels, we hopped on the city's metro to take us to our hotel, the Hilton Brussels, yes, it is the first time I have ever stayed at a Hilton.  We had a corner room so we had big windows looking out two directions.  I told Kevin to stay out of the mini bar because I read on TripAdvisor that someone had gotten charged for things for just touching something because they have sensors in the fridge.  We asked them to clear it out for us so we could store some of the kid's fruit and juice in it but they didn't....crazy.
Well by the time we got to our hotel, it was 2:30PM their time but it was only 1:30PM to us and we were starving since I was stupid and forgot to pack us lunches for on the train.  The concierge recommended a spot for us a few blocks from the hotel that could potentially be serving a late lunch.  We finally got settled in with the kids who were pretty fussy and tired of being cramped up and after a pretty rude server gave us the menu, our mouths just dropped when we looked at the menu.  First of all everything was in French...we asked for English menus (because lots of places do have them for us ignorant people), but she just handed us this sheet of paper that listed out a few words in French and then translations into a couple of other languages.  With two kids getting horribly restless we didn't want to mess with translating at the time.  The one thing on the menu that we did recognize was Club Sandwich with salad which was 22Euro ($28US)!!!!!  It was the cheapest main meal on the whole menu!!!!  So as Kevin and I have learned, once you get your kids settled in a place you can't easily get up and leave once you've realized you were going to spend a fortune on just a sandwich.  We decided to split the sandwich and Addison was content with pomme frites (French fries).

After lunch we started our site seeing.  Since it was Easter weekend, all the shops had amazing window displays.  I loved all the chocolate shop displays with the chocolate bunnies, chicks, chocolate covered strawberries and more.  Belgium was definitely a great place to be for Easter sweets.  But there were also some really interesting display from other types of shops.  I thought this bunny looked pretty psychedelic.

As we walked down this really busy street, I was stopped by Vincent VanGough who graciously wanted to have his picture taken with me.  

As we walked on to the end of the street there was a huge crowd all concentrated on the corner and cameras were shooting all over the place.   We had made it to Brussels' most famous landmark, the Mannekin Pis.  Essentially it's a foot tall statue of a little boy peeing.  The original statue can be traced back to the early 1600's, but no one really knows how it came to be or why it has become so popular.  They do have fun with him though because there is a museum in town that houses over 400 different costumes that have been made for the little guy and sporadically he gets dressed up as Santa Claus, Elvis or whatever.

We made our way up to the Grand Place which is know as one of the most beautiful squares in all of Europe and it is truly amazing.  The town hall and King's hall towered high with the most detailed statues and stone carvings decorating it.  The other little buildings were sandwiched together, but each was unique in decoration because each building used to house a special guilds way back when like bakers, sailors, and traders.  

We sat down in the middle of the square and just took it in.  We must have drawn some attention because tourists from Japan came up to us and asked to have their pictures taken with our children because they thought they were so cute.  I didn't realize we stuck out so much.

There was a couple walking around the square that did stand out a little more than we did.  A French film crew was doing a documentary on Gothic couples.  We learned this because the gentleman in the dreads on the left was the director and he was hiding behind our stroller while they were taping so he wouldn't be in the shots they were taking.  The Goth guy actually looked like his eyes were all white...can you say "Marilyn Manson"!!!?? Yikes...

We found some pretty interesting things in Brussels to say the least.  Number one we found that if you get too far away from the main square it can get a little shady.  I wasn't too sure what had happened to this building.  It looked like it has burnt down but then someone put up all these photos on it so it looked like art, but then some really scary homeless guy sat in front of it.

As we walked down a little further to where the old fish market used to be, there were lots of fresh fish serving restaraunts.  Kevin thought this place looked pretty interesting...a walk up seafood bar.

After a long day of travel and walking we headed back to the hotel.  Kevin got the kids all cleaned up while I ventured out to find food for dinner.  After our lunch ordeal we didn't want to subject the kids to another sitdown meal, so about a 1/2 mile from our hotel there was a Pizza Hut.  Kevin was so excited that both of the kids could now actually share the bath tub. The sad thing is that on vacation they don't have much for toys so they shared a water bottle and a toy duck the hotel gave them.