Brussels, Belgium

On my mission, I spent quite a bit of time in Brussels, since it was our mission headquarters. However most of the time that I spent there was at meetings in one of the two churches or the mission office. I don't really remember much from Brussels, besides the big stuff. During 1 transfer, I lived at the misison home on the outskirts of Belgium. I was part of a traveling singing group. We practiced for 2 weeks and then we traveled around the entire mission doing firesides at each church location for the next 6 weeks. Those are some pretty fun memories but very little of them actually happened in Brussels. Still, I love the city and it represents my entire mission: the Belgium, Brussels mission.

Our time in Brussels was short but good. After getting a few hours of sleep, we decided to venture out on a train and go the city center. Sam loved his first train ride. He thought he was so big! He loved looking out the window and he kept saying, "Hold tight." He should have taken his own advise because at one of the stops along the way, he was caught off guard and took a big tumble off the seat. He held on tighter after that.

Sam riding the train and helping hold Kate's carseat.

Grand Place- Brussels

Another shot of Grand Place

Eating at my favorite eatery just off of Grand Place. It's a greek place. We had some really good gyros and soda, plus some relaxing under the umbrella. It was as delicious as I remember.

After lunch, we started to walk up the street to find Mannekin Pis and we stumbled upon a very loud and vibrant parade of people in military attire. We followed out of curiousity. Lucky for us, they led us right to the Mannekin himself. Sam loved the music and the parade.

I can't remember the reason for the celebration but it was so much fun to be there for it. It made our day very interesting.

Mannekin Pis. He is dressed up in costume several times a year for different occasions.

This was the dueling double. Can't remember why he was there either, but he was hilarious. He is mobile and has one person behind him that pushed him around and controlled him. The best part was that his bladder was controlled by this same person. He would turn in the crowd and then just start pissing on unsuspecting strangers. I thought it was hilarious. Trisha avoided him at all cost. I was laughing my head off when all of a sudden, I was getting pissed on. Haha

Here are the two pissers

We had to stop in our travles at a street store so that Trisha could try a Belgian Waffle. She loved it and so did Sam!

After the fun festivities, we walked the streets a little more. We visited Jannekin Pis (the female version of Mannekin who is much less known on a very small side street), stopped at the grocery store for some last minute treats and souvenirs and then headed back to the train and back to our hotel.

I had planned to see a several more things while we were in Brussels, but after the travel day we had getting there, we wanted to keep it relatively simple. So we missed out on some cool sites, like the atonium and my mission home and office and some awesome parks. But, it was still great to be back in Brussels and see downtown, which is where I spent the most time there.

We retired early because we knew it was going to be another long day of traveling in the morning. It was easy. Our hotel was right down the street from the airport. It was easy to pack up all of our stuff, drop off the rental car and go back to the airport where it all began.

Our trip back home started with us arriving very early at the registration gate only to find out that Kate was not put on our return tickets and nobody at registration knew how to do that. We spent an hour at check-in with someone trying to figure it out and then we were sent to the customer service desk and waited there for 45 minutes while a representative called in to Atlanta (Delta headquarters) to get it straightened out. Toward the end, we really were afraid we were going to miss our flight, but they figured it out just in time. We made it on to our flight. We both made a sigh of relief when we were sitting in our seats, buckled in on the plane!!