London

We took the train to London on Saturday. The Eurostar leaves Brussels and arrives in London in 1 hour and 51 minutes. But Colin still says he can run faster than the train because he has been drinking a lot of milk.

Right away, it was obvious how many tourists were in London. Just navigating down the street was difficult.While walking across the Westminster Bridge, Colin sneezed right into a vendors bowl of roasted peanuts. We pretended we didn't see and kept walking - fast! The London Eye, the ferris wheel, was our first stop. It gave us a great view of the city and Big Ben. When we were in line, a little kid called Chloe "Whitey", I knew it wasn't a racist thing, but that he was just referring to her hair. It was still funny.We wandered around a bit and ended up in Piccadilly Circle for dinner.

We saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Colin and Chloe were digging holes in the grass outside and we told Colin that the Queen was going to be mad and send her guards after him.Monday Afternoon, we went over to the Natural History Museum. Colin loved the dinosaurs and ran through the rest of the museum pointing and yelling out the names of the animals - not much different than being at the zoo. Chloe liked it too. She is now shreking everytime she sees something. It is really pleasant.

We ended up back in the Piccadilly Circle area everynight for a good dinner - thank you Rick Steves.

We took in most of the big sites, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, but we always came back to Parliament and Big Ben. It was so beautiful and something we are glad we saw in person. We arrived back in Antwerp on Tuesday allowing us just over 24hrs to pack to come home - we will be back in Haddonfield on Thursday for 2 weeks.

Summer in the City

We have been seeing a lot of the interesting activities in Antwerp during the past week or so. Antwerpen means hand throwing and it was named after a folklore that tells of a man who cuts off the hand of a giant, who was tormenting the city, and throws it into the river. This past weekend there was a hand throwing contest in Grote Markt. Fortunately when we went down there we did not see any hands being thrown, but who knows what happened after we left.

Last Wednesday, all of the streets were blocked off around us for a motor paced race. I had to google it to find out what it was called. It was a team sport with a cyclist following a motorized bicycle. I would guess that they must have been traveling over 30 miles per hour. It was really bizarre and seemed dangerous, but it drew a large crowd and they were obviously very passionate about it.

We live in the best spot to catch all of the events. There are also mobile bars that often drive down our street. They are rented by a group of people who help move the bar by pedaling while sitting at their bar stools. It is hysterical.

We also bought Colin a big bike this past weekend. I actually cried when he got on it and started riding around - he is so big!! He is doing so well riding it, I feel bad we waited this long to get him one.

We will be heading to London on Saturday for a long weekend. It is going to be a challange to pack light since we are taking the train!

Ladybug Beach

Saturday we drove over to the Belgian seaside. There are several coastal towns where people vacation along the North Sea. The towns we drove through were crowded but not like the Jersey shore. We found a stretch of beach between towns and made it our spot for the day.

Walking through the dunes, we noticed that there were ladybugs flying all around us. The ladybugs ended up being all over the beach. We had so much fun and we practically had the beach to ourselves. I am surprised we didn't bring any home with us.