I know what you're thinking, "Jeez it's been a while since she's posted anything." Indeed it has. After much time away and an extended period of major writer's block, I'm happy to inform anyone who follows my blog that my writer's block has dissolved and I actually have stuff to talk about now! Exciting, isn't it? (There was just a tiny hint of sarcasm in that.)
Hmmm, where to begin?! Ah yes, Belgium.
Let me just start with the day of our flight to Belgium. Our flight was to leave on December 28, 2014 at 7:10 am, so Mike's coach offered to drop us at the airport and said he would be at the hotel to pick us up at 4:45 am. Anyone who knows me knows that I am NOT a morning person...at all, so you can only imagine my despair when I heard that. The night before I couldn't even get to sleep until 2 am, so I only had like 2 hours of sleep before I had to wake up and get ready. Alas, I put on a happy face, got ready, made sure everything was packed, and Mike and I headed downstairs to Mike's coach's car (what a mouthful Mike's coach's car is). We arrived at the airport around 5:45 am, checked in, and started to walk towards a gate. I wasn't a happy camper because I made the mistake of wearing heeled booties that were not broken in yet, so by the time we finally got to our gate I had a giant blister on my left heel. Let me tell you, finding the gate was a whole other story as well. The woman at the check-in desk didn't tell us our gate, so naturally we just looked at our tickets to see which gate it was. Totally normal thing to do, I assume most people do that. However our tickets weren't all that legible. All the words and numbers were mushed together, it all looked like gibberish, and the only thing that stood out clearly was A-22. So without thinking I assumed that was the gate...it wasn't. We walked all over the A wing only to find out that our gate was really C-55 and A-22 was my seat assignment. So on top of feeling like a complete and utter dumbass, my left bootie was digging into my heel more and more with every step I took. I mean, it was a great time. It really, truly was (Giant amounts of sarcasm in that one). By the time we sat down by our gate I had already received 2 different notifications from Google that our plane was delayed first by 30 minutes, then 45 minutes. Then our gate number changed. So as we're walking up to our new gate number we see a line of people waiting to board, and we look at the screen and it says that its our flight boarding. We were really confused. My phone said our flight was delayed, but the screens said our flight was on time and people were waiting in line to board. We just followed the crowd and got in line, after about 10 minutes in line a woman announced that it would be another 20 minutes until we could board, so Mike and I went to sit down. So 20 minutes goes by and now we're back in line to board, we board the plane, find our seats, put our stuff in the overhead bins, sit down, and wait for everyone else to be seated. After everyone is seated the pilot announces that we won't be taking off for another 30 minutes. At this point I didn't even care anymore, I just wanted to take my boots off. I was feverishly trying to take them off without elbowing the lady next to me. The second my booties came off I was overwhelmingly happy and grief stricken at the same time because I knew trying to put those suckers back on was not going to be a good time. The plane finally took off and for the first time in forever I actually was able to sleep on a plane. I found a nice comfy place on Mike's shoulder to rest my head. He told me that I drooled on him, I don't believe him for a second. I don't drool. He drools. I do not. Before I knew it the plane was descending and I had to put those godforsaken boots back on, which as I predicted was not fun at all. The plane landed, we got off, went to baggage claim and the first thing I did was sit down, open my suitcase, and replace my booties with my good ol' nice comfy vans...vans that I know won't betray my feet and give me blisters. We found my Uncle Tom waiting for us by the arrivals exit, I felt really bad because he was waiting for us at the airport for a long time, but I was really happy to see him. We sat down, had some drinks, talked for a bit, then headed to his car, and started driving from Brussels to Turnhout. When we got to Turnhout my uncle took us to eat at his restaurant D'Vine and as always, the food was exquisite. I had the Videe which is sort of like a pot pie, and Mike had the D'Vine Burger. Needless to say any other food besides the hotel food we've been eating since we've been in Spain would have sufficed, but Mike and I were so pleased with what we got at D'Vine. I mean like we literally were entirely too happy, when Mike took a bite of his burger his face lit up like a little kid's would on Christmas morning. It was hilarious. After we were done eating, we talked for a bit more, and then my uncle drove us to my dad's apartment. We didn't really do anything after we got to the apartment. We unpacked some of our things and after that I'm pretty sure both of us took a nap, because lord knows we both needed one! When we woke up we were both stricken with hunger, so we walked down the street to the corner frituur and got some food. When we got back to the apartment we set up our Apple TV, put on that Nonstop movie with Liam Neeson, and after we decided to call it a night.
I'll continue on with our week in Belgium in another post, because at this rate if I keep writing this post is going to be extremely looooooong. So until next post.
xx - Amanda!
