Brugge, Belgium: Day #5 or "Odd gifts your children buy you..."

June 20: Brugge, Belgium:

We woke up to rain. But, for some reason, "European Rain" is much better than "American Rain". It's true! The rain here is like a gentle mist with warm air and no wind. Seriously, I could deal with this. Of course we were one of the few people who were using umbrellas as us Americans don't seem to be especially waterproof. :)

We managed the bus seamlessly. How is it that finding our way across a Belgian town where we LITERALLY can't understand a single sign is exponentially easier than trying to get to Cal Train on the bus in San Francisco, even when you have done it before? We may have built our country from European roots, but we sure did not build our transit systems from them!

We strolled the cobblestone streets and had an incredible lunch, complete with the TOTALLY anticlimactic ordering of a beer by Bailey. The waiter did not even give him a second glance, let alone ask for I.D. Bailey must have forgotten (or just hoped WE had!) that he is not legal to drink back home and purchased a shot glass roulette game. Hmmm.... that will look rather nice in OUR bar at home.... he was allowed to test it out though... with apple juice! :)

While Toby, Riley and I were in the Salvador Dali museum, Bailey and Jensen went chocolate  shopping and came back with gifts. Riley got a HUMONGOUS gold coin, I was handed a super cool coffee cup made from chocolate, and Toby's gift was a box of chocolate.... penises. Seriously. Not a set of breasts? But penises? Boys. Welcome to my traveling fraternity house. Poor Jensen. All he wanted were some chocolate covered strawberries. Not a single on to be found so he just made his own. A quick trip to the store for some Belgian chocolate and strawberries and Jensen was in business. Want to guess what Jensen ate for dinner? Yep! TWELVE OF THEM! It is vacation after all!

Five days into our trip and we have perfected the art of "the wifi babysitter". Toby and I found two bikes in the CREEPIEST garage in the world below our apartment. (We were pretty sure every horror movie ever made was filmed there.) After seeing the the gear shift on one was completely broken and the back tire was warped on the other, we gamely took off to ride the streets of Brugge hoping that the bikes would not fall apart in route! We finally stopped our Tour de Brugge about 9:30pm and had a lovely dinner for two in a real Belgian restaurant where we were the only people speaking English and then we tooled home just after sunset which was close to 11:00pm.

Upon returning our bikes to the garage of doom and taking the sketchy elevator up from the basement or horror, we entered the apartment to find the boys calmly sitting on the couch... with three HUGE knives lined up on the kitchen counter. When asked what the heck was going on, they said there was lots of banging and yelling upstairs and they wanted to be ready to defend themselves. Of course. Arm yourselves with knives.

Don't even consider using the phone to call the emergency number your father and I showed you before we left. Sigh.

We are off to Paris next to meet up with the Faurot's, Reinkings, and Jessica Founds. There will be 8 boys between us (all aged 10-18) so I am sure there will be mayhem!