Belgium

We tried to let the girls wake up on their own this morning, but when D and A were still asleep at 10 we decided to wake them up. We could see the Avifauna park from our window. It was 11° and felt downright balmy after the 0° and -0° we’d been having. 

Matt wanted a stair picture of us, and this was the best of the bunch. 😂

With our hotel stay we got to walk through the Avifauna park for free. Avifauna means all the birds in a region. 

The park was mostly empty and fairly busted, maybe just because it is winter and was sprinkling this morning. But Viva Cuba? We don’t get it. 

Penguins are the cutest. These ones stood and swam, none of them waddled for me. 

This is the second replica of this lighthouse I’ve seen here. Wish there was time to see the real thing!

Black swans!

We finally made our way over to the playground. The girls climbed this slide tower of death. You can kind of see where they are in the picture, but after this they continued climbing to the top. And they kind of wanted to go down that swirly slide, but it was wet so we said no.  

We couldn’t be in Holland and not get a windmill picture!

We pulled over on the side of the road for these ones. 

Matt loves me, so we drove back out to the temple to fet a shot with all of us. 💕

Then we used the timer. After we took a video of ourselves trying to get a picture. 😂

We drove through Rotterdam because a. I read it was cute. b. The Cube Houses. c. Stroop waffles. We couldn’t find a place to park so we did a drive by the cube houses. So cool!

I was determined to get a stroop waffle, and you don’t get in my way when I’m determined with food. So I’d looked up a place the night before and found the address close to the cube houses. We drove over and walked all around. The address we wanted was 21B, so of course we found 21A and 21D, but C and B were missing. One more search found that I’m my Goudewaffle was permanently closed. Why??? Then we had a fiasco with our credit card that resulted in me having to chat with them for 20 minutes with the information that if our cc is denied (like it was at the cute little bakery consolation station for my stroop waffles) it’s probably an issue with the vendors setup. Anyway, our cc was denied there multiple times, and since she’d already heated up a pizza for Matt, she insisted we keep the food. So Matt ran to an atm and ran back and it was fiasco #1. This is my “I just want a dang stroop waffle” face.  

Then we had trouble getting to the next stroop waffle place I found. Downtown and one ways and aggressive pedestrians, bikers, and drivers made for a less than pleasant experience. I did find Didi’s stroop waffles where they made me 5 fresh carmelly and delicious cookies. 

By this point we’d spent a really long time and felt like we hadn’t accomplished much, and we still had a 2 hour drive to Belgium. And it gets dark at like, 5:00, so our day felt kind of shot. If I knew this morning what I know now, I probably would have skipped out on the stroop waffles. But live and learn. 

Stupid Rotterdam. 🫤

We drove right into Belgium. No customs, no border stopping. Just a sign. Then we hit lots of traffic in Antwerp. Then lots of traffic outside Brussels. Then lots of traffic at the south end of Brussels. It wasn’t our best day, that is for darn certain. But we made it to Le Manoir de Capitaine and it’s very cute. Adi got the bedroom nook off the main apartment. 

Delaney modeling the living room area. That’s the door to the master bedroom on the right. 

And Frankie struck this pose in her and Delaney’s room. I knew they stopped checking people in at 8, and we were set to arrive around 6:30. Then I got a text telling me our room

Number, and that the key would be right inside the door in the building on the left. So we tried to get into the office but it was closed. We looked all around there and finally Matt had the idea to check our actual room, and sure enough there was the key right inside the door. Unusual way to check in. 

We found a restaurant online but they operate only on reservations, which was a bummer because it was v cute inside. We found this cute Italian restaurant with one man that spoke no English working. The menus had rough English translations, so we figured it out. The girls loved the prettt bottle of water we bought to share. 

I got a delicious glass bottled coke. 

We still love each other even after a rough day. I‘m sorry for what I said as we searched for stroop waffles. 😂 

3 delicious pizzas!

Matt’s creamy crab pasta. 

And my lemon chicken pasta. Both were good, but not the most flavorful. And we both agreed we needed something else to balance all the pasta our. Some bread or salad or something different. 

We got a chocolate mousse to share and that was delicious!

Matt and I liked our nighttime walk so much last night that we did it again. This castle is about a 5 minute walk from where we are staying. 

And a beautiful 18th century church right across the street. 

We grabbed a shot of the restaurant where we ate dinner too. 

We walked all around this cute little town and we can’t wait to see it in the daylight!