Early Halloween & Another Wakefield Visitor!

We love Halloween and had to celebrate early as the kids have fall break during actual Halloween so none of their friends are around.  We had two spooky movie nights and lots of great food.  I never really got pictures of the girls and their friends but here are a few of our fun treats.  

Charlie had already carved his pumpkin and really wanted to carve something else, he ran to the corner store to see if the guy had pumpkins, but no luck, so instead he carved this watermelon & named him!

Our second Wakefield, MA visitor arrived via Budapest, Maddie Shea is studying there for the semester and dropped in to see Brussels.  We loved having someone from home and showing her all of our favorite spots and checking out a few new ones!

Maddie's Mom was Katie's 5th Grade teacher and now Katie got to teach Maddie about her favorite Belgian chocolates! Probably best if Maddie didn't follow Katie's lead exactly, she ate so many samples she had to wait for us in the car because her tummy hurt!

A new place we visited was a town on the Belgian coast named Blankenberge, where they had some Halloween events.  First was a childrens parade, then fireworks on the beach, and then they were having a bonfire on the beach and burning a witch-take that Salem, MA!

We made it just in time for the children's parade...

Some creepy witches kicked off the parade.

This is one of the giants that are in parades all over Belgium.

A float.

Behind the cool old car is a witch made of crepe paper, this is the one they burned at the beach later!

We even had marching/dancing storm troopers.

This guy was there to watch I loved his Belgium spirit so I knew he had to go on the blog!

 The "Fun Fair" in the Grote Markt turned out to be a carnival, we liked watching the people on the body shaker!

Charlie convinced Dad we had to try the shooting game, I liked the name of the booth!  Charlie was delighted to win a toy gun and told me later that now he has a new job he wants to do when he grows up, he now wants to be a sniper!

Here is what was left of the witch by the time we got all the way down the beach...we didn't quite realize how far of a walk it was to the bonfire and were slow leaving our nice warm dinner place! I was really curious about the tradition of burning a witch on the beach but hesitated to ask because everyone spoke Dutch!

Today was the Brussels Marathon, all the streets were blocked off around our house, we walked down to the finish line and got this picture after the runners had all crossed.  

Two last pictures... Charlie had Victorian Day at school and had to dress like he was from the early 1900's.

 He reported that the teachers were all really strict like they were in old times!

At a recent soccer game Katie had her own cheering section, here she is with her friends after the game.  Their friends all like to make the blog, so I had to be sure to get this one posted!

We hope you all have a happy Halloween!

Back to life..back to reality

Just a few more shots from our awesome Ireland trip, I've been meaning to post them forever, but life has been quite busy, which is why we all just wanted to stay on vacation in Ireland.  

Our last day we stopped in this beautiful beach town on the way back to Dublin.  Happened to find the way to the Coast Guard Station in case we needed it!

Another beautiful pub, but it was Sunday morning so it was closed...

Sisters at the beach, Katie still wants to be asleep!

This place was closed too, but adorable!

We crossed this on our way from Waterford back to Dublin...sure looks like the Zakim Bridge doesn't it?

I liked these books for sale in the airport!

 I think Ryan Air could use my photo for their marketing material...love this shot from my window seat!

Rick was Right Again...On To Kinsale and Our Escape

In our travels we have learned to trust the travel guide Rick Steves.  We usually grab one of his books for wherever we are headed.  As we planned our final day I had looked at Cork which was fairly close to where we were staying.  I read about a few places to visit there but when I looked for a list in Rick's book, he had no mention of Cork.

Once we got there, we figured out why...it was just a big city, lots of shops, etc, but it wasn't really exuding the charm we were looking for.

So we visited the City Jail which was supposed to be a good stop with kids.  (and our kids loved it) I could not get out of there fast enough, I really don't like visiting jails and prisons...I've been to Alcatraz, one in Johannesburg, SA, and now this one, and I think I'd be happy to never see another one!

Greg locked us in a cell & took this...Kelly's friends will love this one!

Charlie trying to get us out!

Funny what you learn about your family...sorry Dad!  The story on this kid was he was a pickpocket..

We made a beeline for the town of Kinsale, which was highly recommended by the book and our local friends from dinner the night before.  We were so happy that we did not miss this beautiful place!

The town itself was charming, unless you are Charlie and the waitress forgets to bring your chicken nuggets right before they close the kitchen...so you have to zip yourself in your sweatshirt along with your tears!

His sisters show some solidarity and Katie ends up going to the neighboring restaurant to reorder some nuggets!

We loved wandering around the shops in the little downtown...

Then we headed for the old Charles Fort and lighthouse by the sea. 

It was such a beautiful spot, sadly some of the best views were on top of the forts walls, in some of the inside parts you couldn't see out!

Sisters!

Using the self timer on the phone!

If we had more time I would have wanted to do the Scilly Walk on the signpost below...

We even got to stop by the water near this charming pub before we headed out, Charlie said he had to touch the water!

Rock skippers!

Another of Greg's favorite things when we travel is using the navigation app called Waze (or Google Maps). On this trip, it totally saved the day, by telling us the fastest route back to our town was by a ferry!  It saved us a longer drive around the peninsula and we had a short, beautiful boat ride.

Our ferry!

We finished off our day with a trip to the Cobh Escape Room which was set in an old bank vault.  Before the building had been a bank it was the headquarters for the Cunard Lines...here is the sign from the front...

Pretty impressive sign, huh?

Heading in...

Here we are in the vault after we have escaped in under an hour. (with some help and hints along the way).  This was Charlie's favorite escape room of the three we have done.  He was quite proud of his contribution, finding a needed key in a planter!

Money is all fake of course....and at one point the girls had to do a conversion of its value into Euro!  Smoke was coming out of their ears!

We finished off our great day with some live music in the pub, the one we liked best was just a group of musicians sitting around playing random instruments and singing together.  The highlight was a big old dog wearing hearing protection and sleeping under the table in the pub, sorry no photo!

"Welcome Home" Said the Irish Passport Officer

When we travel as a family we go through passport control and hand the person our big stack of passports, on our recent trip, we were most excited to land in Dublin.  The friendly passport guy checked the girls passports and read Katie's and told her Welcome Home, he said the same to Kelly!

Long wait for the rental car...kids are loopy!

Loving the beautiful front doors of Ireland, even prettier with the changing leaves!

 We drove down to the south coast past Cork we stopped in a cute little town to grab some lunch and then let Charlie burn some energy at the Rock of Cashel.

Greg and Katie doing their goofy shots!

On to Cobh.  It's claim to fame is that it is the last port the Titanic sailed from.  We loved our AirBnB, it looked right down on the town docks and the Titanic Museum.  We could watch the fishing boats going out, or big ships going up the channel to Cork Harbor.

Way down on the dock are Greg and Charlie watching the boats!

A new discovery- Brown Soda Bread- AMAZING!!!

The Titanic Museum was very cool.  I had read that you got assigned a real ticket for a person onboard and at the end you found out if your person lived or not. We talked this up to Charlie and made a family bet that if your person didn't make it you would get no dessert the rest of the day.

The original pier that the passengers from Cobh boarded tenders and were ferried out to the boat from. So many Irish people left from this dock bound for the US they call it heartbreak pier.

3rd class berthing area

The 3rd class passengers

First Class Lunch

Our First Class Passenger

A 3rd Class breakfast which was a big deal because 3rd Class Passengers didn't used to get any food onboard but had to bring their own!

Another shot of the 1st Class Stateroom

 I was in second class so would have been somewhere in the middle.  

Here is the name of Charlie's guy, who survived the sinking.  We learned that he survived by wrapping a towel around his head to look like a lady and sneaking into a lifeboat!   Greg was the only one of us that didn't make it and he said that the only way Charlie could get dessert that day was to dress up like a girl!

I liked the Guinness truck restocking all of the pubs in our little town! Our next stop is Blarney Castle, hoping for that famous gift of gab.  Our family joked that perhaps Charlie didn't need to kiss the stone so we can get him to stop talking sometimes! For those of you that haven't visited, you climb up the tower and the stone is on the top perimeter of the castle. Here is the view from the outside looking up... After your long climb, you lay on your back and the guy helps you to reach up and kiss the stone...here they all are kissing it!

Our next stop was the town of Buttevant where Greg's relatives were from many moons ago!

Charlie was a fan of the town playground!

We hustled back to Cobh to meet some friends of Greg's from when he worked in the Seychelles Islands.  They were wonderful people and it made our trip to make some new friends.  Katie wants to go back and visit them again!  They also gave us some good ideas on where to spend our last full day.

Thanks for a lovely dinner!

I had planned for us to drive the Ring of Kerry the next day, but for those of you that have ever tried to travel with kids fighting in the backseat...we decided that another long drive wasn't in the cards, so instead we decided on...stay tuned!