All,
We have successfully arrived in Brussels after a long day of traveling. For those of you that don't know, we are in Belgium/Germany for a week taking a mini family vacation before a conference I have at the end of the week.
Even though it is 1:30 pm EST, we have successfully adapted to the time change - Kristin and Cale are asleep for the night (7:30 pm local time). The secret is to stay awake from 1:30 am EST until 1:30 pm EST. That combined with the hassles of traveling takes care of adjusting to time zones.
Traveling has gone well considering that we have a 1 year old in tow, but lady luck could have definitely been on our side more. Things started on Friday with scrambling to leave work/pick-up Cale from daycare to get to the airport, only to find out our first flight was delayed beyond our flight to Brussels, due to bad weather on the east coast. Turns out the same itinerary was available starting on Saturday, so we had our first day of vacation at home. This worked out OK since we didn't have anything urgent to take care of and we could then watch the UM/Delaware St. football scrimmage.
Saturday was surprisingly hectic, but not too bad to get to the airport. Our flight was slightly delayed due to remaining bad weather on the east coast, but we still arrived in Philly on-time. We had to rush a bit to make our connection to Brussels, which was not easy with Cale and our carry-ons. It was worse since we decided to bring Cale's car seat in-case there was an extra seat on the plane - but alas, no luck. To make matters worse, US Airways put us in the last seats before a divider, which meant our seats couldn't recline at all (even though those in front of us could). This lead to the aforementioned in-ability to get much sleep on the plane. It was a miserable experience, but I kept telling myself once we arrived in Brussels it would be Cale's "naptime" (approx 11 am in Belgium). Cale woke up at 1:30am EST when I went to change his diaper (he has an annoying habit of completely filling his diaper at night with pee to the point of it leaking out). I figured him being awake was a better risk than a pee soaked kid squirming in our laps. Lucky for us he is so good natured. He only had a few fussy moments for our entire 8 hours of traveling, and even the remainder of the day despite being way behind on his normal number of hours of sleep. I hope this continues!
Upon arriving in Brussels we obtained the rental car. After a few comical attempts to get the car in reverse (it is a manual BMW, so making sure you are in R and not 1 is not as straight forward as I would hope, leading to going forward when you think you will be going backwards), followed by a few more comical minutes of getting the navigation system up and running, we were off. We decided to rent a car, vs. say train travel, for the trip in order to have complete control in our schedule. The navigation system worked great, but driving in Brussels is not as straight forward as I would have hoped. Driving in Australia on the wrong side of the road was less confusing. Lots of lanes just randomly end, and there are a lot of streets with more than 2 roads intersecting (so several "hard" vs. "soft" rights / lefts to take). To add to the challenge, the different directions of traffic are not separated by yellow lines - which I almost learned the hard way as my lane simply ended into on-coming traffic!
With only one wrong turn, we arrived at our hotel, which is right at the center of Brussels a minute or so walk from the historic city center. Cale was knocked out about a minute into our drive and was snoring away in the back; so everything was working out perfectly for our plan for Cale to take an "11 am nap" and then get up for a few hours for dinner, seamlessly transitioning to the 6 hour time change.
The only problem was that our room wasn't ready at 11 am (check-in is at 2pm). So we decided to park the car in the garage, and put our seats down to rest while Cale napped. At one point he even woke up, so I put him to my chest and he went right back out. If we hadn't been in a BMW, I think we would have looked like a famly of gypsies (keep in mind we were not looking our best after traveling for many hours, and had to look weird sleeping in the car in the garage). Finally Kristin got up at about 1pm local time and checked on the room, which was ready. Cale would have slept longer, but neither Kristin nor I could handle the car any longer.
After a quick shower, we headed out to explore the center of Brussels. Our first stop was lunch, for some Belgian waffles - which somewhat surprisingly are still called Belgian waffles in Belgium, and can be purchased at 3pm in the afternoon. After that we spent several hour exploring different markets. Brussels is a beautiful city. The only item of note is that we kept trying to get to an area known as St. Hubert, which was recommended by Kathy and Tom (world traveling aunt and uncle from Kristin's side of the family). The only problem is that for the life of us we cannot correlate names on maps with the signs at street intersections. Eventually we found what we were looking for, and it turns out we had walked through the St. Hubert area without knowing it.
We finished up the day at the center market square, which is a wide open cobblestoned area surrounded by beautiful historic buildings. Cale enjoyed pushing his stroller around chasing me. After some play time there, we went to a restuarant for a beautiful outdoor meal. I had a pot of steamed mussels with fries and a local Beer (another recommendation of Kathy and Tom), Kristin was not as adventurous. Cale had some chicken with apple sauce and fries.
All in all an exhausting day, but well worth the trip. We're bummed that we lost one day in Brussels due to flight issues, but we are excited to be heading to Brugge tomorrow, another city in Belgium.
Hope all is well. I'll try to upload pictures from the day (Edit:Done!), but I'm exhausted tonight and need to get to bed in case Cale decides to get up at 6 am EST rather than 6 am local time.
We have successfully arrived in Brussels after a long day of traveling. For those of you that don't know, we are in Belgium/Germany for a week taking a mini family vacation before a conference I have at the end of the week.
Even though it is 1:30 pm EST, we have successfully adapted to the time change - Kristin and Cale are asleep for the night (7:30 pm local time). The secret is to stay awake from 1:30 am EST until 1:30 pm EST. That combined with the hassles of traveling takes care of adjusting to time zones.
Traveling has gone well considering that we have a 1 year old in tow, but lady luck could have definitely been on our side more. Things started on Friday with scrambling to leave work/pick-up Cale from daycare to get to the airport, only to find out our first flight was delayed beyond our flight to Brussels, due to bad weather on the east coast. Turns out the same itinerary was available starting on Saturday, so we had our first day of vacation at home. This worked out OK since we didn't have anything urgent to take care of and we could then watch the UM/Delaware St. football scrimmage.
Saturday was surprisingly hectic, but not too bad to get to the airport. Our flight was slightly delayed due to remaining bad weather on the east coast, but we still arrived in Philly on-time. We had to rush a bit to make our connection to Brussels, which was not easy with Cale and our carry-ons. It was worse since we decided to bring Cale's car seat in-case there was an extra seat on the plane - but alas, no luck. To make matters worse, US Airways put us in the last seats before a divider, which meant our seats couldn't recline at all (even though those in front of us could). This lead to the aforementioned in-ability to get much sleep on the plane. It was a miserable experience, but I kept telling myself once we arrived in Brussels it would be Cale's "naptime" (approx 11 am in Belgium). Cale woke up at 1:30am EST when I went to change his diaper (he has an annoying habit of completely filling his diaper at night with pee to the point of it leaking out). I figured him being awake was a better risk than a pee soaked kid squirming in our laps. Lucky for us he is so good natured. He only had a few fussy moments for our entire 8 hours of traveling, and even the remainder of the day despite being way behind on his normal number of hours of sleep. I hope this continues!
Upon arriving in Brussels we obtained the rental car. After a few comical attempts to get the car in reverse (it is a manual BMW, so making sure you are in R and not 1 is not as straight forward as I would hope, leading to going forward when you think you will be going backwards), followed by a few more comical minutes of getting the navigation system up and running, we were off. We decided to rent a car, vs. say train travel, for the trip in order to have complete control in our schedule. The navigation system worked great, but driving in Brussels is not as straight forward as I would have hoped. Driving in Australia on the wrong side of the road was less confusing. Lots of lanes just randomly end, and there are a lot of streets with more than 2 roads intersecting (so several "hard" vs. "soft" rights / lefts to take). To add to the challenge, the different directions of traffic are not separated by yellow lines - which I almost learned the hard way as my lane simply ended into on-coming traffic!
With only one wrong turn, we arrived at our hotel, which is right at the center of Brussels a minute or so walk from the historic city center. Cale was knocked out about a minute into our drive and was snoring away in the back; so everything was working out perfectly for our plan for Cale to take an "11 am nap" and then get up for a few hours for dinner, seamlessly transitioning to the 6 hour time change.
 |
| From 2009 Belgium Trip |
The only problem was that our room wasn't ready at 11 am (check-in is at 2pm). So we decided to park the car in the garage, and put our seats down to rest while Cale napped. At one point he even woke up, so I put him to my chest and he went right back out. If we hadn't been in a BMW, I think we would have looked like a famly of gypsies (keep in mind we were not looking our best after traveling for many hours, and had to look weird sleeping in the car in the garage). Finally Kristin got up at about 1pm local time and checked on the room, which was ready. Cale would have slept longer, but neither Kristin nor I could handle the car any longer.
After a quick shower, we headed out to explore the center of Brussels. Our first stop was lunch, for some Belgian waffles - which somewhat surprisingly are still called Belgian waffles in Belgium, and can be purchased at 3pm in the afternoon. After that we spent several hour exploring different markets. Brussels is a beautiful city. The only item of note is that we kept trying to get to an area known as St. Hubert, which was recommended by Kathy and Tom (world traveling aunt and uncle from Kristin's side of the family). The only problem is that for the life of us we cannot correlate names on maps with the signs at street intersections. Eventually we found what we were looking for, and it turns out we had walked through the St. Hubert area without knowing it.
 |
| From 2009 Belgium Trip |
 |
| From 2009 Belgium Trip |
 |
| From 2009 Belgium Trip |
We finished up the day at the center market square, which is a wide open cobblestoned area surrounded by beautiful historic buildings. Cale enjoyed pushing his stroller around chasing me. After some play time there, we went to a restuarant for a beautiful outdoor meal. I had a pot of steamed mussels with fries and a local Beer (another recommendation of Kathy and Tom), Kristin was not as adventurous. Cale had some chicken with apple sauce and fries.
 |
| From 2009 Belgium Trip |
 |
| From 2009 Belgium Trip |
 |
| From 2009 Belgium Trip |
 |
| From 2009 Belgium Trip |
All in all an exhausting day, but well worth the trip. We're bummed that we lost one day in Brussels due to flight issues, but we are excited to be heading to Brugge tomorrow, another city in Belgium.
Hope all is well. I'll try to upload pictures from the day (Edit:Done!), but I'm exhausted tonight and need to get to bed in case Cale decides to get up at 6 am EST rather than 6 am local time.
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