Belgian National Day with Old Friends

My CG classmate Kathy and her family came through Brussels on their European tour.  It was great to see all of them after almost ten years!  We were most impressed by their packing, they were backpacking it and travelling the lightest of all of our summer guests.

Jim, Kathy, Elaine, Greg

Urbanic & Hughes kids

They timed their visit perfectly to see Belgian National Day which is the Belgian 4th of July.  What was interesting about the National Day was that it was a work day for all the Belgian Armed Services as they set up equipment, demonstrations and displays all through the main streets of Brussels.  We went down to the main park to check it all out, here is what we found...

Free sunglasses at this booth..I think it was for a bank?

Charlie and James stood in line forever to try this out.  We were entertained by the high school age girls working it who were more interested in their cell phones than moving the line along!

Booths lines the streets and tons of people were out to see it all!

There is a big parade late in the afternoon, where the King and Queen and family arrive at the reviewing stand to watch everyone go by.  We were lucky enough to be able to see the King's car from a distance and then watch the Royal Family from a big screen.

Here is the Royal Family on the reviewing stand from a local website:

I love that the King&Queen are about our age and the kids are the same rough ages as ours!  Lady in red is Queen Mathilde and King is in Purple sash.  The 4 kids are to the left.  I don't know who the lady in the cream dress is...

I loved the front guy's beard!

We looped around behind the back of the reviewing stand and saw the mounted riders coming by  guess was they were the King's Calvary but I'm really not sure who they were but they looked and sounded very impressive.

The parade was complete with "giants" something that the Belgian towns all pride themselves on having.  Americans like our Macy's Parade balloons, the Belgians like giant puppets-some of them are very old.

Even a giant horse!

We also liked all the fly overs.  Early in the week we had seen them practicing, we were out in our backyard when the helicopters flew over...

They also had F-16's fly over too...

This photo was taken by a local website too, I was not fast enough with my camera!

We also walked down to check on the famous Mannekin Pis statue and he was dressed up in his special National Day outfit, here he is...

This group of guys were right by the statue, they were dressed identically to Mannekin Pis, so I'm guessing maybe they are the ones who guard him or change his outfits?  I could have asked them but they all posed for some photos and walked over to the pub to finish their beers!

            Louna gave our visitors her stamp of approval!

Kelly arrived home just in time to take the photos at the start of this post, she had been at the Coast Guard's AIM program all week.  She was telling us all about her experience.  It was fun because Kathy had gone to AIM many moons ago.   It sounded like a hard week for her, but a rewarding one too, she certainly has a better idea of what next summer would be like if she were to attend.

The Urbanic family was pleasantly surprised by Brussels, it wasn't a city they would put on a bucket list for their European tour, but thought it really had a ton of cool things to see and do (besides just the Hughes family)! We hope more of you will come and see for yourselves if you agree with their review!

The Zugspite- Sledding in July!

Again I am very slow in writing this entry...there is nothing better than spending a July day in the snow!  We headed for the Zugspite which is the highest peak in Germany, it also is shared by Austria but it is not Austria's highest peak. 

 The gold marker in the background is the top..we had lunch at a picnic table up there with the clouds swirling around us...very fun!

 I liked this cool thing at the top.

A better picture of the gold marker.

The Dad's finally found a beer, they wanted one at the very top but we rushed them down to the glacier so the kids could sled!

 We chose to go up the German side (over the Austrian) because from there you can also take the cable car part way down to the glacier.  Sledding on the glacier was amazing on a July day!

In season there is skiing at the top too, here are some of the runs partially still covered in snow.

 Greg and Erik decided to take some photos with all of this gear that was up there for some climbing school, they were trying to make all the images look as if they were really doing dangerous things, but I can assure you they were quite safe-enjoy!

Katie joined the fun!

There was a chapel at the top and this is a view out the window. They had a few pictures from when the Pope visited a few years back.  Must have been fun getting him in and out of there safely!

 We came down and the kids put on swimsuits and attempted the alpine lake...I'm not sure which was worse the pebbles at the bottom or the cold water.

 I tease Jake that I am snapping lots of pictures to share at his rehearsal dinner someday..here is a great one! He was wearing Charlie's swim goggles and dancing!

 We had dinner in this nearby town and it had wonderful painted houses and gorgeous flowers blooming off all of their balconies.

 Here's an example of the paintings...

 Tomorrow we headed separate directions...us home to Brussels and our friends on to more German cities.  Kids were bummed...

A final view of the beautiful mountains!

Again my friend Myev wrote about this weeks ago on her blog...here is a link if you want to see more photos...stay tuned, many more blog entries to come I'm just behind in writing this summer!

https://fillthewall.wordpress.com/2018/07/15/day-13-zugspitze/

Awesome Alps and the Castles

We are delighted to arrive in the tiny town with our Air BnB.  It is nestled in a valley near the famous castles.  After checking and exploring our super cool place, we read in the book that there are some castle ruins a short hike away.  We convince the Dads to go for groceries while the rest of us go exploring.

That is the little village we stayed in, Greg especially loved the church bells that chimed all night...every fifteen minutes, he gave a full on rant about it the first morning!

Kelly and Anya felt like they were in the Sound of Music

Kids at the top of the castle ruins.

Name of the castle ruins in case you want to read about it!

When you send the Dads to shop you never know what you will get...they made a little conversion error when buying the ground beef and ended up with a meat baby instead!

Eric and Myev recreating the photo in the pub at the corner...we tried to watch the Belgium World Cup game there but ended up back at our own place with a great tv!

Watching the game

Enjoying German beer and watching the game

The Belgian flag on the field at the start!

Besides a trip with friends what could make things better when you are 8?  Your own pedal car and a tiny town to tear around in and explore! The owner of the AirBnB had this and let Charlie use it= HEAVEN!

 We got up early and departed for the castles, the ticketing system is a bit tricky to figure out and you have to show up early to claim your reserved tickets.  We had time to kill before our tour, here is Jake and his understudy Charlie!


Hohenschwangau Castle- this was the first one we got to see.  It was fully furnished inside.  No photos from the inside because they don't allow you to take any.  Our tour guide was a little soft spoken..but he was only a warm up for the tour guide in the second castle...Katie really enjoyed him and can do great impersonations, she cracked us up at numerous meals doing her impersonation of our guide!

Waiting to go up and see the castle in the background.

Walking out after our tour

The first castle we tour..this is the one that he lived in while he had the second one built.  

The morning mist was rising off the little lake-gorgeous!

Recreating a Storyland photo from long ago when they had these same hats!  This was in the castle gift shop!

Here is Neuschwanstein we took this from "Mary's Bridge" that overlooks the gorge nearby.

Another view from the bridge, what a beautiful spot!

 Again, no real photos from inside the castle because they weren't allowed, the best was our quirky tour guide and the spot on Katie impersonations that followed!

We got home and had a very late lunch after a failed attempt to eat near Fussen, we even drove into pedestrian only zones and got lots of strange looks.  We walked up to the beer garden that is halfway to the ruins and had a fabulous afternoon enjoying the mountains, the cowbells and the beer!

Charlie feeding the goats at the beer garden.

Beers with the best views and great company!

The largest couch in the world? Greg could not touch...very funny to see how awkward he found it to sit on!

Everyone was pedal biking!

We head to bed excited for our trip to the Zugspite the next day...

Again my friend wrote about this long ago, I'm still catching up...here is her post...

https://fillthewall.wordpress.com/2018/07/15/day-12-castles/