More gray and cold. Ugh. Though the weather hasn’t been great we have been fortunate that our time in Belgium has prepared us for this sort of climate. And of course it just brings me back to my time here in 1995; it has felt like October for the past two days. Jonathan was voting for a trip to Pfaueninsel (peacock island) despite the weather. I think I overruled him however and it was a good thing. It was a cold and windy day and once again everyone had multiple layers of t-shirts to try and stay warm. We decided to go to the puppet museum which sounded really cool with the exhibits and shows. It took three train transfers to get there (though it was just more time out of the cold and it was ... read more

Again Eliza woke up early, this time at 6:30. Ugh. She cuddled in bed with us for about an hour and then Jonathan got up with her. I stayed in bed until about 8am and the girls woke around 8:30. We had breakfast and then the girls had a bath. By the time we got going it started pouring. Luckily the girls were content to play and the storm passed quickly. Still the weather dictated our plans for the day and we headed out around 10:30 to go to the Natural History Museum. We stopped en route, once again, and had coffee and pastries. It is nice when we are able to spend a few days in one location, instead of just day trips. Our kids crave routine and the vacation routines that we have adopted ... read more

Holland, Netherlands, Niederland…anyway you say it, that is a great country. There is just a whole different vibe in the Netherlands versus other parts of Europe. The Flemish part of Belgium has a little of that feel but it just isn’t the same. I had read about this place, Kinderdijk which has the largest concentration of windmills and I thought it would be a great place to take the kids. It was very complicated to get there via public transportation so we rented a car for the day. Renting a car here is not cheap, but we figured that once you added up all of the buses and trains and factor in the (sometimes) convenience of coming and going as you please that it would be worth it. Plus, it would shake things up in ... read more

Got up this morning around 8am. I had packed a lunch last night for everyone so we just had breakfast and got ready to go. Caught the 9:18 bus to the train station and met the Clausen family Christian, Zoe & Henry). We ended up buying a 10 ride train ticket for 69 euro and sharing it with them. This ride would have cost us about 31 euro total, but with the pass worked out to be about 28, so we saved a little something. We caught the 10:02 train to Brugges. The kids had a good time on the train. Little Henry is in love with Abigail. Zoe told me that everyone at day care knows all about Abigail. So cute. We played Uno and one of the Haba travel games, this one with the ... read more

Today we got up around 8am. I took a very short run to get the blood flowing while the girls and Jonathan had breakfast. Emma, Eliza and I had gone out for the obligatory chocolate chip breadsticks and pastries. We got dressed and walked across the Rhone to the T-1 tram line and took it to the train station to catch a 10:24 train to Grenoble. The scenery changed from meadows of sunflowers and cows to some spectacular mountains as we approached the French Alps. We didn’t really have any big agenda on our trip to Grenoble, but a friend of ours, Susan, had spent a semester there in college (21 years ago she claims) and it seemed like a nice day trip for ourselves. We had armed ourselves with the bare minimum. We carried ... read more