Michelle's Visit (Part 2)

Day 7: Relax
After getting home around 1:30am from London, church was a challenge. My Gospel Doctrine lesson (oh yes, I'm the new gospel doctrine teach for the adult English class) was kinda rough (my head felt like it was spinning), but still not as bad as my first Sunday teaching so that's good. We drove by the Atonium on our way home from church. Ryan had meetings after church so I left the kids with Michelle and went to pick him up thinking he'd be done. I told her I'd be back in 30 minutes...and hour and half later we returned. I fell asleep on the steering wheel (I was parked) while I waited so that was definitely a plus (not sure when the last time I got a kid free nap).

Day 8: Aachen, Germany
We had a slow morning. Ventured out to the Zaventem market after dropping Ryan off at work then finally got ourselves out the door around 11am to head to Aachen. We went to the Dom in the center of town and walked around the shopping area (I hit up the euro store...I guess it's a good thing I haven't find one of those here). We stopped for some Ice Cream right outside the Dom (how do you pass up 80 cents a scoop?). Michelle ordered the Mint, but when Kherington saw that it was green and the other two were white she insisted she have the green one. When it started dripping I traded her so I could clean (lick) it up. Man was it nasty. It tasted like they had dumped a bottle of cough medicine into the mixture. The funniest part was that she wouldn't trade back with me...apparently she could tell there was something wrong with it.

Next up was the BEST kebap place in the world called Istanbul Kebap Haus. There aren't many things that I would go out of my way to eat and this, along with Cafe Rio Pork Salad, is one of them. The kebap's are ginormous and before taking a bite Michelle couldn't believe I didn't want to share one...if you've ever eaten one of these you'd understand why I didn't want to share. Once she took a bite she understood :).

The original plan was to go to Maastricht too, but since we knew Paris was going to be a long day and we needed to finish planning it we decided to head home.

Day 9: Paris, France
This was the place Michelle wanted to visit the most so we wanted to make sure to do it justice. And when you're toting around 2 kids who have already been traveling for over a week it gets to be more of a challenge. With stops, it took us about 3.5 hours to drive to our parking location at the Saint-Denis Universite. When we got there I though it was closed because the doors closed (like a garage) instead of just a stick that moves up and down. I was recalculating the GPS when we saw someone pull up, press the button and the doors opened...good thing we saw that.

We jumped on the metro and got off at Champs Elysees. We had decided to do a hop on hop off bus tour and there are two different companies (a red and a yellow). I decided to just see which bus I saw more of and buy that pass...I saw WAY more red buses so we went with that (les car rouges). This pretty much made Paris for us. It was so easy to just relax and have the bus take us where we wanted to go.

The first ride through the loop, we got off at Trocadero and let Kherington wander. She really enjoyed the street break dancers and the bubble lady. Hopped back on at the Eiffel tower, then off at the Louve and walked over to Saint Chapelle and Notre Dame. After doing some tourist shopping (finally found me a green scarf) we jumped on the bus and rode to...McDonalds! Don't worry, only Kherington at there...Michelle and I were still full from our crepes (ham/cheese and nutella/banana). Oh and did I mention Kevin has now eaten only breastmilk and nutella/banana crepe? He has a pretty quick grab and went right for the crepe...smart guy.

We really wanted to be able to see the sites at night, so we got back on the bus right early enough to ride the entire loop. But wouldn't you know, nothing that be quite that easy with kids.

I had asked if Kherington needed to go potty before getting on the bus and of course she didn't. Then 1 stop in she starts bouncing up and down saying "poo poo pee pee." I tell her she has to wait...well, after about 30 minutes, plus another 15 sitting at the eiffel tower (apparently waiting for someone to buy some drinks at the stand across the street), I figured that we weren't going to make it the whole loop. But no worries, we were coming up on Notre Dame and I knew there was a potty about a block from the stop. I went down and asked the bus driver about how long we were going to be stopped (5 min) and then asked if I had time to take her potty and have it wait. He said no problem. Well, less than 5 minutes later after sprinting to the potty and back, I watched the bus drive away. So I start chasing it. It doesn't have to wait for the first light (just my luck). I throw Kherington up on my shoulders and start sprinting. Keep in mind Michelle is on the bus with all our stuff spread across 2 rows AND Kevin...but I am wearing the wrap. It's a good thing I had mentioned to meet at the McDonald's if anything happened b/c after cutting people off, j-walking and dodging cars with a toddler on my shoulders, I finally gave up. I found the metro and prayed that they'd make it back to the McDonald's. Michelle and Kevin were waiting there when Kherington and I arrived (thank goodness!). What a way to end a trip to Paris. I guess we can tell Kevin he went on his first date with his Auntie in Paris :).

Day 10: Brussels
The sun was actually shining so we walked over to the Evere market on Rue de Knoop. It is only about a 15 minute walk and in the 1.5 years I've lived here I've never been (it's only open Wed though). It was way bigger than I thought it would be and the best surprise was that the Waffle people from Stockel market (only open Tues, Fri, Sat) also do the Evere market! Michelle was able to have the best waffle made in Belgium.

After Kherington work up from her nap (she fell asleep in the stroller on the walk home), we headed over to the Breendonk Memorial. It was a concentration camp and was really interesting to walk around. I felt a little bad to have Kherington running around, but she wasn't too loud and there weren't very many people so we never had to be right next to anyone. I basically followed her around and listened to the recording (you just type a number and the hand held device starts talking so I didn't have to be standing in a certain place or anything)

Day 11: So Sad to Say Goodbye...
After stopping by the neighborhood bakery to test some pastries, we headed to the Kortenberg market. This is the first market that I've seen live chicken at. It was a smaller market with mostly older people that seem to all know each other. I love seeing that kind of thing where this is really just a normal day to stroll down to the market and chat with their favorite vendor and friends.

Weew! We had so much fun having Auntie Michelle here and can't wait for more visitors to come! But now it's time to get packed for our Baltic cruise...yes, goal was to blog this before I left b/c I didn't think I'd do it once I got back.