First day in Europe

I'm finally rested enough to type a little about our trip over to Europe.

Our flight to Chicago was completely uneventful and we arrived in Chicago on time with 40 minutes until our flight left for Frankfurt. Right before we arrived in Chicago they made an announcement that the flight to Frankfurt, Germany was delayed 15 minutes. We arrived in Chicago and grabbed a bite to eat before our flight which ended up being delayed almost 3 hours!!!

We finally left Chicago after they brought up a new plane in from Philadelphia. It ended up being a smaller plane and we were packed in like sardines. The flight was uneventful and very very very long and uncomfortable. We finally ended up in Frankfurt, Germany at 1:30 pm on Sunday afternoon. We had left our house at1:30 pm on Saturday.

The Frankfurt airport is not air conditioned and most people do not use their air in their cars either. It was very hot and humid and after such a long flight we were pretty tired. We picked up our tiny rental car and we were on our way to Antwerp by about 3:30 pm.

Our new Garmin GPS is brilliant. I'm not sure how we would have gotten along without it. At one point in the trip we got stuck in a major rain storm and ended up pulling off of the highway onto a side road. It was hailing over marble sized hail. Our great GPS managed to get us through this little German town and back onto the highway.

The little German towns was one of the weirdest/coolest things we saw all day. The storm seemed to come up very quickly and was quite severe. We pulled out of our spot right off of the road as soon as it stopped hailing (and I got a few pictures). It was still raining a little bit but as we drove through this town there were huge groups of people outside sweeping the leaves that had fallen off of their driveways and off of the street. The streets were quite flooded and at one point we went through some pretty deep water and we were worried we wouldn't make it through the water. The thing that astonished us most was that it was still raining a little and the German families, young and old were all outside in their golashes cleaning up the debris from the storm before it was even fully over.




We drove past tons of windmills and I found them really beautiful. We stopped at a small town right before the Belgium border and had dinner in a great little Italian place. We walked through this sweet little town, down brick streets, had pizza then walked down the street to get gelato. I'm now totally in love with Gelato.

We got into Antwerp, Belgium about 9pm last night.We are staying in the Crown Park Plaza on the edge of Antwerp. It's a really nice hotel and the shower is one of the best ones I've ever used in my life. I'm pretty sure it's strong enough to strip paint. Of course, after all that travel a shower was wonderful. The beds have great thick comforters in nice washable duvets. I had one of the best nights sleep ever.

This morning I went down and had breakfast with Kyle before he left for the plant. They had all of the normal American breakfast items plus a large yogurt bar with all sorts of granola and nuts for it. They also had a large assortment of breads and cheese and lunch meats.

While Kyle worked I took a nice long nap and read quite a bit as well. It was nice to relax for the day. Tonight we went with John, a guy who works for Kyle, into Antwerp on the bus. The city center has a huge church. I didn't take my camera with me tonight but I will be sure to take it tomorrow when we go downtown.

We had dinner in a Greek restaraunt. It was very interesting trying to order. The guy at the restaraunt spoke only French and Flemish and we spoke only English. We ordered using lots of hand signals, the waiter bringing ingredients out of the kitchen to show us, and us trying to decipher words in the description of the dishes.

We ended up having an amazing meal. Everything was absolutely delicious. We sat and talked for quite a while and realized that it must be getting kind of late but it wasn't getting dark. We started walking back to the bus and realized that it was almost 10pm and the sun hadn't set yet. At 10:30 tonight it was still light outside and the sun is up again about 4:30 am!!!

Here are a few photos of our trip in yesterday: