We took a family trip over Thanksgiving so beforehand we had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner with a family from church! I couldn't go without having Thanksgiving dinner..it IS pretty much the best ;) We had it the Friday before Thanksgiving and then pretty much ate leftovers until our trip so that worked out pretty great ;)
We left for our trip late Tuesday and got into Belgium suuuppper late. The kids actually did pretty good on the plane though, thank goodness!!!! We have some friends stationed in Brussels (we knew them in Camp Lejeune) and they were amazing enough to let us stay at their home and use their car for our whole trip! We seriously have the best friends. They were going on their own family trip that week so we just had to work our schedule around taking care of their dogs (which we were of course happy to do! paying for a car and hotel for 5 people for 5 nights is expensive!). Lizzie was TERRIFIED of the dogs but she lived and we had a pretty awesome trip!
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| GORGEOUS sky on our way to the airport! |
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| Me and my girls :) |
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| Andrew was being a bit cranky |
Our first day we hung out around Brussels. We took the kids to a Natural History Museum, which they seemed to like! They thought the dinosaurs were pretty cool.
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| taking the metro into Brussels :) Andrew loooved this |
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| walking on our way to the Nature Museum |
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| Eating some Belgium fries! YUM!!! |
That afternoon/evening we went into downtown and explored a little bit...the best part being we got to try some Liege Belgian waffles....which are ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. If you ever have a chance to try a legit Liege Belgian waffles...doooooo ittt!!!! Hands down in the top 5 best things I've ever eaten. I ate them at every opportunity on our trip ;) :) :)
The next day we took a little drive up to the Netherlands! We went to the temple there, walked around the little town for a short bit (it was FREEZING though so we didn't last long), and then on our way back to Brussels we went to the Kinderjiik windmills! We barely made it before sunset and it was suuuppper cold by then so we rushed out of the car to see the, take a quick pic, and then rushed back to the car. It was worth it though...the pics are gorgeous with the sunset!!!!
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| See? BEAUTIFUL |
Our next little day trip was to Ghent and Bruges! Which EASILY and should have been each a separate day on their own but we didn't have enough time on our trip to plan it that way. They are both super cute towns though and super fun to walk around! Ghent was our first stop...it was bigger than Bruges and we honestly didn't see too much of it. Mark wanted to go to the Castle of the Counts, so we did that, ate lunch and then went on our way to Bruges. I would have liked to explore it more though and hopefully will get a chance to one day!
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| The kids loved the castle...they go to climb stairs, see cool swords...and some torture devices :/ :/ that was fun...we had to come up with some distracted replies to their q's about some of them ;) ;) ;) |
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| waffletime again! this time we got to watch them make it right in front of us |
Bruges was one of the top things I wanted to see on our trip. It was worth it, but like Ghent, I wish I could have explored more! We did a little walking tour from a travel book, went to a chocolate museum (which the kids loved), and then walked a little bit more into the main square where their Christmas Market was set up! It was pretty cool to come at that time....Christmas lights everywhere, an ice skating rink, little booths of yummy food and cute Christmas things.
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| this was probably the best part! ice skating in Bruges <3 nbsp="" td=""> |
Saturday we spent the day in Brussels again. We spent the morning at a Harry Potter Exhibit, Evelyn saw signs around town and wanted to go so we did happily :) It was fun to walk through and Evelyn was pretty excited about it! She's been starting to watch the movies and wanting to read the books. We're so excited to start them with her! We of course, enjoyed the exhibit too :) :) :)
After that we tried to go to some caves nearby but ended up just having a nice drive in the country...we couldn't find the caves for the life of us! It was crazy....we saw signs for it and once we approached the "address" and drove past it...which there was nothing...we soon came to a sign pointing the direction we came from saying it was back that way....so after driving circles we gave up and went back to Brussels :)
We went back into the city center that evening, the Christmas Market had officially started and there were lights everywhere and activities and stalls and food. It was so pretty!!! We saw two different light shows, ate yummy things, saw Santa...so pretty good last night!
My little angels!
This was the coolest merry go round! It was mechanical so each seat had moving parts that the kids could be in control of. So fun!
Light show at the cathedral
Light show at the Grand Place...hard to tell in pics of course but it was pretty cool!
We left Sunday but had some time before our flight so we went to the Waterloo Battle Memorial. Our friends had gotten back late the night before so our friend Don went with us. It was nice to get out and let the kids run a bit before a long flight.
Our flight back was a little rougher than the flight there. Elizabeth was cranky and whiney and crying for a good bit of it so that was fun :( But we made it! It was such a wonderful trip and we enjoyed it so much!
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| more toddler fun! :) |
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