No lazy days in Brussels

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Brussels with Paris and Geneva soon to come

Did I mention that we had fun driving out of Luxembourg? We did miss our daily drive through the city but mistakenly aimed for Trier which was to the east, instead of Aarlon to the west, so went about 60k out of our way. Mind you, we were out of Luxembourg so that was a bonus! We did somehow get fed into Trier and had to stop and ask directions to get back out. The rest of the trip to Bilthoven, south of Amsterdam was almost uneventful except that traffic built up the closer we got. We managed to take all the right turns and landed in front of Eugenie and Arie-Jan’s house, found the keys to their garage sun room, got ourselves together and walked into the village, found a really nice Italian restaurant for dinner and it was still light when we walked back. We really enjoyed the area, it was green, the houses beautiful, bicycles ruled on the narrow streets. Eugenie arrived home from work at around 10:00pm, on her bicycle - no problem being out at this time in this country and Arie-Jan arrived around 11:00pm. We were able to have a short chat with them and then off to bed. After breakfast (which it turned out would be about the only times that we would have with Arie-Jan, who was busy with local government election work), we took trains into Amsterdam. Not for the first time was the area right in front of the main station dug up and noisy with tunnelling and railway work. Luxembourg was the same and so were a number of London stations. Most of the main streets were also being dug up so it was a pleasure for me/us to get onto a canal boat for an hour’s ride and rest, after which we took a bit of a walk into the back streets along some of the canals. We stopped at a crepe café and treated ourselves before taking the trains back to Bilthoven. The country side here was a lot greener than Austria and even Luxembourg had been, so we were enjoying watching spring happen all around. We had some time with our hosts before retiring and met them again for breakfast before we all went our separate ways. I must say that Bilthoven was a delightful place to have stayed in. If any one is wondering, no we didn’t see any tulip fields, they are much further north of Amsterdam and yes I was disappointed to learn that!

Brussels

Another day and another adventure on European roads! We were doing alright until the outskirts of Antwerp when traffic ground down to a halt and finally stopped dead for an hour. I’d seen an overhead sign some way earlier that had a car on it’s side with some times written beside it, ie, ½ hour and 1 hour. I guess we got the 1 hour deal. So even though we couldn’t read the sign we got the gist of what was going on.

Entering Brussels was another one of those disaster/adventures. We’d stopped earlier for petrol, and lunch which we shouldn’t have needed if the whole trip estimated at just over 2 hours had been so. We also bought a Brussels road map which proved a winner because our downloaded instructions would have got us well and truly stuck. Not that we didn’t manage to loose ourselves anyway, the roads didn’t have any signs or directions nor did they match up with what the map said but it did help greatly with getting us to Kelly and Richard’s house, a 5 story older terrace house with tons of character. Our room was on the 4th floor, 80 steps up, good exercise but hard work for me. The moment we turned into their street, I spotted a woman surrounded by children and guessed correctly that this was Kelly who had just returned from picking the girls up from school.

Our fun in Brussels was about to start!!

And now it's time for a break. We are here in Geneva and baby sitting duties call.
I will write more if i get time otherwise, it may be New York next week.

P.S. Paris was great - for a day, more would probably drive me crazy and at least we didn't have to use our car!!