A Visit from Our Friends

July 17 - 28, 2003

Before we could blink, more friends arrived from Colorado. We love having guests, and these guests were ready to see Europe with us! Aside from the fact that it's EUROPE we're talking about, the motivation for this trip was for Will and his friend, Jesse, to get to spend some time together. Luckily, that also meant that Kevin and I got to spend some time with Jesse's parents, and our friends, Lisa and Randy. Along with them came younger brother, Ethan, who became friends with Ellen almost immediately. Their oldest son, Zach was in the same time zone, on a student exchange in a town on the Italian/Slovakian border.

The gang arrived on Thursday, July 17, in the afternoon. They rested and did some grocery shopping with us (that seems to be a favorite thing for our guests!) On Friday we took them to our three favorite sites close to our house. First stop was Beersel, the castle ruin. Then we had lunch at a favorite bakery/restaurant in the country (Jesse and Will ready to order in the photo below on the left, Randy and Lisa enjoying the country below on the right). Next stop was Villers Abbey ruins, which everyone loved (photo above). Our last stop was the Butte du Lion where the battle of Waterloo took place.

On Saturday we headed for Amsterdam (which is deserving of an entire webpage - click here).

Upon returning from Amsterdam on Monday, we decided to let Jesse and Will have a day to play together at home on Tuesday. Of course, that also meant putting them to "work". Much to my delight, Jesse thought riding the lawn mower was a lot of fun (see below)! While he was slaving away (mostly playing with Will), his parents and Ethan were off shopping, sightseeing and bicycling in Brugge (apparently in that order).

Wednesday being our friends' last day in Belgium, before we all took off for London, it seemed sensible to drive to France. Lille is only an hour's drive from our house, and I had never been there (except to drive through with my mom so that she could say she'd been to France). So off we went (Ellen went to a friend's house.) Lille is shopping paradise for expat Americans from Belgium. Now I know why and plan to return sans children in the fall. It is also a very pretty city and has a great museum (which I'll also have to do in the fall). After doing a little shopping, we walked to the Grand Place (photo below on the left) and found the old stock exchange (below on the right). We had a lovely lunch and then walked around until the kids convinced us that they'd had enough. I drove them home, while Randy and Lisa saw more of Lille.

Of course, this isn't all we did with our friends. It's just all we did in Belgium. To see our adventures with them in Amsterdam, click here. To see our trip to London, click here.

To go to our homepage, click here.