On the Bridge at Avignon...we were dancing...

On our way, we passed the bridge at Avignon.  It was in a beautiful old city, another gorgeous church at the top of the hill.  I really liked the Madonna at the top...

Here is the famous bridge...

I was proof that the marketing worked...I wanted to stop and see it all from the children's song...

I was proud of the two that actually danced!

This dragon gate latch on the bridge was very cool...little guy has a great view watching the river!

Our next stop was the Roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard.

We really didn't know what to expect but were pretty blown away by how amazing it was.  

This placard summed up everything I was thinking about it...

Here is a bit more to wow you with its design (from Wikipedia):

The bridge has three tiers of arches, stands 48.8 m (160 ft) high, and descends a mere 2.5 centimetres (1 in) – a gradient of only 1 in 18,241 – while the whole aqueduct descends in height by only 12.6 m (41 ft) over its entire length, which is indicative of the great precision that Roman engineers were able to achieve, using simple technology. 

Here it is..panorama shot..

If you look closely you can see the kids on it...Greg took this shot!

We finally managed to drag Greg from his Roman ruins...and make a beeline to our place which was still hours away at the coast, we were way behind schedule...shocking for us, huh?

In Search of the Sun!

We headed off to the South Coast of France in the hopes of feeling the sun on our faces for a few days.  Here is the border into France, you just drive right through.

We were looking at 12-hour ride, so our first night's stop was in Lyon, France.  A beautiful old city in between two rivers. 


We got there with enough time to explore the first of many Roman ruins on this trip. 










Here they had a amphitheater.  It was pretty hilly on the way up and Charlie whined so much that a family stopped and asked us if they could point us in the right direction!  He turned into Spiderman when we actually made it to the top!

 Lyon has a mini Eiffel Tower, here is a photo.

There was a beautiful cathedral at the top of the hill,

with a very cool sign for Christmas that said "Merci Marie"  You could see it from very far away!

A very cool night view the ferris wheel changed colors every few seconds.

Lyon is a foodie city, it was fun to look at all that was on offer in the butcher's windows.

Charlie was very excited about his bed in the hotel room, he climbed up and down about 50 times, then decided he needed to sleep with Katie. 

Big sister of the year award I'd say!

We got on the road early, excited to get to the coast...but first we had to stop and see Greg's Roman ruins near Nimes...stay tuned!

Welcome 2018!

We had a nice relaxing Christmas, Charlie was thrilled with his visit from Santa.  We enjoyed our visit to the Netherlands on Christmas night to see the Barata family.  They live in a small town there and all the houses have big front windows, with very cool, unique Christmas decorations.  Next year I plan to visit some small towns with my camera in hand...future window photos to follow!

We had a pretty quiet week, the highlight was a trip to our local ice rink, which looked amazing and smelled even better, there was a waffle stand in the back corner.  One thing about Brussels is there are always wonderful waffle smells wafting in the air!

 Beautiful!

Dutch & French-no sign was needed- you could smell them the minute you came in the building!

The little kid area even had a house they could skate through with bears inside!

We welcomed the Barata family to our house for New Years Eve, we had a great game and puzzle night,

We had some American style Raclette

We headed to the Grand Place to see the buildings all lit up...

Katie and James welcomed in the New Year with a basketball game in our backyard...Greg made them stop about 1AM...he thought it was too loud, but the fireworks around off went on for hours!  We could get occasional views from our highest windows, we learned Belgians like their fireworks on New Years!

We hope all of you had a great New Years- Happy 2018!

Christmaspalooza!

A Canadian lady I met in South Africa was heading back home for her first Christmas back in the cold and she said it was going to be her "Christmaspalooza".  I feel like that has been a good description of our family has treated this one..

We attempted to visit as many Christmas markets and events as we could pack into a short season!  After our last markets in Luxembourg, we also went to one at Maredsous.  Our drive to Maredsous took us through a really cool town called Dinant, which we look forward to visiting again-if nothing else just to drive through this again...

You drive right through the gap!  

We found the Abbey at Maredsous...we decided we need one of these firepits...with the logo!

Charlie (our drummer boy) was happy to find a friend..

The market was on the grounds of the Abbey where they brew wonderful Belgian beer.  So we had a taste and Charlie and Katie checked out the ice rink! 

Kelly missed the skating as she was in England with her swim team...quite a trip!  My high school sports trips meant we rode a school bus a few towns over!

We had some rare for Brussels, December snow...Charlie LOVED it and needed more for his snowman, so he begged me to climb up on the neighbor's garage roof...eventually I relented...

We had an epic snowball fight one night, one thing about the hedges you find all over our neighborhood is that when they catch the snow its perfect for lazy people to make snowballs...you don't have to bend down to scoop it up...just reach out and its waiting for you!  We were all delighted to have the snow again after so long without it!

Our next Christmas Market was in Cologne, which was rumored to have incredible markets. The rumors were true!  We only made it to 2 although there were at least 4 we wanted to see...next year we plan to go and stay overnight.

 I loved this amazing display and the famous Cologne Cathedral towering behind it.  Before we took this picture we walked all through the market surrounding the Cathedral.

Our next stop was the "House Elves" Market because it has an ice rink...and what an ice rink! It was huge and had bridges over it and different sections.

View from the bridge as all the lights came on, the statue looked so neat all lit up!

 Charlie and Katie coming off the ice...Kelly took it easy and didn't skate due to her foot..all she needed was a person to skate into her!  The guy in the uniform was one of the skating rink security guys!

Christmas tree making in Charlie's class. He is having a great year, wonderful teacher and new friends!

 This painting appeared on our neighborhood pub...Santa & his Belgian beer!

 We took that as inspiration to join some friends on a Santa Pub Crawl...was super fun to walk down the streets and call out to people and watch their reactions...we had cars honking horns, people asking to take pictures with us!  Here is our group in front of the famous Brussels statue of the little boy peeing, called Mannekin Pis...Everyone loved the tall guy to Greg's right because he had his own legit white beard!

 Here we are on the famous Grand Place, watching the light show set to Cia's Christmas Album...very cool.

We hosted a holiday open house for our friends and neighbors. The kids all got into helping, especially Charlie...here he is decorating his first train cake.  (I have not made the train cake for the past few years as they had no cooking spray in Africa and it was a disaster without it)

 He wanted to be sure he got the best part of his masterpiece...

 Kelly got inspired and made a pizza Christmas tree which was admired by everyone! 

Charlie begged for a Santa Suit of his own...and I picked one up for his friend too...they were adorable!

 We went to the Children's Mass at our nice English speaking parish here and the little kids did a great Nativity play, the highlight was two real donkeys in the nativity scene outside...they were very popular with all of the kids! Charlie told the girls he is asking for a donkey for Christmas next year!

Not the best picture of the donkeys..but it was a madhouse by them-all the kids were petting them!

Thanks for reading about our Christmaspalooza...I hope that all of you have also had a wonderful Christmas season and that Santa is very good to you...if any of you happen to get a donkey first please let me know so I can send Charlie by for a visit!

Christmas Season Begins!

With much anticipation we got out our decorations right after Thanksgiving, and trimmed Katie's tree. We have not figured out how to chop down our own tree here (although there are tree lots everywhere). Greg even saw a guy on a bicycle driving home with his Christmas tree-how is that for dedication? We are all happy to be in a Christmas country and the weather makes it feel like Christmas to us..its cold just like it should be!

As we shook out the tree skirt the girls were happy we would not find a scorpion lurking under it this year!

 We headed to downtown Brussels to check out the Christmas market...it doesn't compare to the ones in Germany...however there were a few noteworthy things-first this carousel-look at the options!

 Hot air balloon?

 Climb the steps and fly in my own biplane?

 Or ride in the Titanic?  We don't get cool carousels like this back in the US!

 The beer stall for one of the Belgian companies- Leffe...it was its own pub when you got inside.

 Charlie and Greg got to head back to the US for a few days...while Greg worked in NYC, Charlie got to spend time with his best friend from South Africa who now lives in New Jersey..here is trouble!

 The girls and I decided to head to the nearest German Christmas market we could find...we drove a little over an hour away to Aachen-totally worth the trip!

A view from the steps of town hall, looking at one part of the many block long market.

 This giant ball was kind of like a doughnut, covered in warm vanilla sauce...the girls LOVED it!
 (I don't remember what it was called but tons of people were ordering them)

 The shops go all out to decorate, this was the place that sold the famous Printen cookies of Aachen that all the guidebooks said we had to try.  We did our part and got a sampler pack so we could try the ones covered in each type of chocolate-delicious. 

Here is a description from a website called the taste of Germany...
Aachener Printen were developed in the early 1800s in the city of Aachen (Aix le Chapelle) as an advancement to the lebkuchen baking arts. They contain a special combination of the finest flour, sugar molasses, honey, and cinnamon, anise, cloves, cardamon, coriander, and turmeric, and candied oranges and lemons

This stall was selling Swazi candles!

 This area had creepy decorations of witches on top of their entire beer garden area..not sure why there were witches at Christmas?

 Another bakery had these adorable guys...not sure anyone besides Charlie could eat a cookie that big!

One perk of being in Brussels is when important people come to speak at NATO...they might let you come for a quick meet & greet..here is the Ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, introducing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Rex and I, he was very gracious and went around and shook everyone's hands and took pictures if we wanted them. 

While we waited for Rex on Dec 5th,  I was talking with a Belgian guy who was telling me about the Belgian customs for St. Nicholas Day-which happened to be the next day.  He was explaining that it is a very big deal here, for some families it is bigger than actual Christmas.  Most importantly he told me that you must leave out a glass of Belgian beer for St. Nick and carrots for his horse.  I shared this with Charlie who took that for action the same evening. 

 St. Nick even came to ice hockey practice with a special surprise for Charlie's team!

Here is a closer picture of St. Nick.

After dinner that night Charlie ran around getting everything ready for the big man, he put out his shoe as he learned about in French class at school-not his stocking!

All ready! Look at that beautiful beer-he used the Waterloo Uncle Mark!