I'll tell You What I Want, What I Really Really Want...

I want to finish the April A-Z blog challenge...Day 2-I'm on my way...

B is for Bethany Beach

Okay, so you might have been expecting a more exciting locale but it's only Day 2 of the challenge so don't be knocking Bethany Beach. We spent several family vacations here with friends and my girls will say those holidays were some of their favorites.

I already told the story of how we had to run from the law in this little beach town one memorable 4th of July so I won't retell that now but, if you need details you'll find them here.

We rented the same house in Bethany about a block from the beach four years in a row. It was in this little Delaware hamlet that hubs and his partner in crime (J) earned their nickname-The Pack Mules. Four girls and two mothers need an awful lot of gear hauled to and from the beach every day.

The guys had a routine- get up, make coffee to go cups, load the chairs, umbrellas, shovels, towels, blankets, coolers, fishing poles, tackle boxes, noodles, rafts, and buckets onto their backs (hence their nickname) and then walk one block to the beach to stake our claim. The beach tended to get crowded as the morning wore on and we didn't like to have people on top of us so the Pack Mules developed a strategy. They created ginormous and interesting sand sculptures every morning while they waited on the fish to bite. These sand sculptures were something to see so people gave them a wide berth and thus, did not crowd us. This one is a giant seahorse and scallop shell...

The girls enjoyed construction too. If they weren't in the water they were building houses.

Literally...this is Daughter1 relaxing on her sand couch after a hard day's dig. We used to joke that we were going to hire the kids to move mulch when we got back home because let me tell you, these girls moved some major sand.

Late afternoons were spent playing games, working jigsaw puzzles and napping-

At least once during the week the dads would take the daughters to the pier to check out the catch of the day. They loved it...

Some evenings we'd visit the boardwalks in nearby Ocean City or Rehoboth Beach where caramel corn, Dippin Dots, and arcade games were all part of the fun.

Other times we'd hang out on the beach, eat pizza, fly kites, fish, and pose as The Spice Girls...

circa 1998

The Spice Girls were big back in our Bethany Beach days. In fact, we may have a pose from every summer holiday spent in Bethany...

Several years after our last Bethany Beach vacation these same friends came to visit us in the UK. We all went to Belgium for a long weekend, and while it took a little coercion, we did manage to convince the girls to recreate the old days in the middle of Brussels's Grand Place. They went along with it because they were pretty sure no one they knew would be watching.

Whoever would have guessed I'd have a blog one day?

circa 2004

Brussels also starts with B so I think it's okay to include this picture here.

The girls now in their 20's may think otherwise.

I promise you that not all of my posts in the A-Z will be about little girl days.

But some of them will.

Nor will all the posts be this long.

But they might because let's face it-I'm wordy.

I didn't have a blog when my girls were young so I use my blog as a keepsake of sorts. I'm pretty sure summers at the beach are memories worth keeping.

If you'd like to join the blog challenge click the A-Z button on my sidebar for more information and linking.

If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops

No, I did not just quote a Barney song in my post title. We never watched Barney when my girls were little.

Can you tell I'm trying another Not Me Monday post today?

I think they are fun to write although they confuse some of you readers out

there....the idea is to post about something that really happened but write as if it didn't.

Read along and pretend you'll understand.

We did not have a low key weekend here and it certainly has not rained every single solitary second since Friday afternoon. My husband did not go up and down the basement steps at least 847 times to be sure the walls and floor were staying dry.

Speaking of the hubs...he did not arrive home from Belgium on Friday bearing gifts. He knew I would never want a beautiful tapestry to hang on my stairwell.

Or two smaller wall hangings.

And he can never talk anyone into anything so there is no way the sales lady would have just given him two embroidered pillow tops.

And he did not go to Belgium at least once a month for the six years we lived in England yet wait until we lived on this side of the pond to actually buy a tapestry. We always plan ahead and do what is easiest.

My husband knows I don't have a sweet tooth so it would not occur to him to bring home a box of Belgian chocolates.

And of course we would definitely not break into the chocolates over the weekend because we will be with our girls for Easter and naturally they would want us to share.

And we did not once think back to last Easter when we enjoyed a sunny and

wonderful weekend in Brussels, Brugges, and Ghent.

We would never say we wish we were sitting on the square soaking up the

sunshine and a plate of moules -frites in Brussels.

A weekend of torrential rains in NJ is oh so much better.

We for sure did not go out to dinner in the middle of a monsoon Saturday night. Who does that? We did not run into a detour because the road was flooded and I would never have taken us the long way round because I have an excellent sense of direction and never need to rely on my GPS to get us anywhere. And because we've been married for 25 years hubs would not be surprised by this. He would never question my logic in planning a route. He was the driver so of course he would consult the map before we left the house.

We didn't go to a German restaurant and eat some delicious sauerbraten. And I had not been thinking all day about what wonderful German dessert I would order and then be too full to order dessert at all. I did not try pickled herring and I did not love it. And we did not once mention how the restaurant reminded us of a favorite place in Munich.

(Munich, 2004)

You know we never ever talk about life in Europe.

We are so not like a broken record.

On Sunday we did not have to wait around for Loews to deliver some shelves for the basement because the non-stop rain did not motivate us to finally get all the boxes off the floor down there. And you know when I say us I am not talking about me. Seriously.

And I did not wake up to another gray and rainy day today.

And I am not going to feel grateful because the snow piled six feet high on the edge of the driveway is now down to a measly two foot pile.

And all this rain means spring will not be beautiful and green.

And I am not an optimist.

In Bruges...just like the movie, only not

One thing we’ve discovered in our travels as new almost empty nesters is that we have to be in all the photos. When our girls travel with us they like to say we torture them with all the picture taking. These days though it’s just my husband and I so we spend a lot of time saying, ‘No, I was in the last one…you get in this one.’ We also spend a lot of time saying, ‘I wish the girls were here.’ Especially when we’re having lunch in a lovely outdoor café and we’re served this…

I’ve posted this picture especially for Daughter1…mussels are her absolute favourite. And Belgians claim to have invented the ‘french fry’ and may I just say they have those down to an art. Mussels and fries or moules et frites are served in just about every restaurant in Belgium. They always serve their frites with mayonnaise and they are yummy.

Good Friday we woke to sunny skies and after breakfast we hopped on a train to the town of Ghent. We took the first train we could find that said it stopped in Ghent but turns out it also stopped in about 10 other little burgs in the Belgian countryside so it took a little over an hour to get there. It was that darn language thing….we managed to decipher which was a quick train back to Brussels at the end of the day and it was only about 40 minutes. Course I insisted we ride the tram from the centre of Ghent back to the train station and that took us on a circuitous route around the city. As my husband mentioned (about 25 times) we could have just taken a taxi. He says tram is short for ‘Trying Reallyhard to Annoy Me’ but we did see a lot of the neighbourhoods around Ghent this way and it was great for people watching.

Ghent is a charming Flemish city filled with medieval buildings and famous for its huge gothic cathedral and its ancient Castle of the Counts. The River Leie runs thru Ghent and is dotted with the pretty old guildhouses and lots of restaurants and cafes with outdoor seating.

Our first stop was the castle-Het Gravensteen built in 1180 although apparently a wooden castle was sitting on this same spot even earlier.

It was home to the Counts of Flanders until they were no more and was later used as a courthouse and a prison. Castles becoming prisons is a recurring theme in Europe.

We wandered next down to the incredible Gothic cathedral known as St. Baafskathedraal, built in the 1200’s.

In a small side chapel inside this cathedral is one of Europe’s most well known paintings. The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by the brothers van Eyck, dating back to 1432, but with color so amazingly clear and bright it looks like it was painted yesterday. It is essentially the perfect painting to view on Good Friday as the centerpiece of the many panels is the Lamb, representing Christ’s sacrifice.

On Saturday (also bright and sunny and as I’ve mentioned before I’m all about the weather) we ventured onto the local trains once again, this time to the city of Bruges. This very lovely little town was at one time the center of the international cloth trade and lace making is still done here today.

Like Ghent, Bruges is also a medieval town with beautiful buildings, cobblestone streets and picturesque canals winding throughout…we spent the day visiting lovely old churches, shopping in the quaint little shops, and sitting in outdoor cafes just watching the people go by.

We were back in Brussels for dinner Saturday evening. There is a famous street in Brussels called Rue des Bouchers but what we might call restaurant row. Servers stand in all the restaurant doorways and try to coax you inside for a meal.

Since my husband is in Brussels quite often we went to a place called Vincent’s. One of the things I love most about my husband is that he makes friends wherever he goes and Brussels is no exception. This is our server for the evening standing beside my husband’s new Belgian friend whose name is Steve (although he told me I should call him Steve McQueen).

Anyway, we were going to eat at Vincent’s on Thursday evening but Steve McQueen told my husband he was going carp fishing that day and we should come Saturday instead. So that’s what we did. We had a traditional Belgian steak which was served with a sauce that was flambéed just before presentation. A perfect ending to our ‘short break’ in Belgium.

And one more thing I’ll add here about short breaks…

...they are always way too short!

Brussels…and I’m not talkin’ sprouts

My hubs travels to Belgium fairly often on business and since he was there last week for a meeting we decided to make a weekend of it and I would join him. They have a name for trips like this in the UK-they are called ‘short breaks’. Good Friday and Easter Monday are ‘Bank Holidays’ here which essentially means banks are closed as are most businesses. I caught the Eurostar from London to Belgium last Thursday-it’s a fast train and from the center of London you can be in the center of Brussels in only two hours. I’d love to tell you something interesting about the train journey but I pretty much sat down, listened to some instructions in English and woke up 2 hours later to someone speaking French. The Eurostar goes under the channel and the idea of that freaks me out a little bit so I love napping the journey away. If I’m being honest I pretty much love napping anytime.


We stayed in a hotel in Brussels and then took local trains to the towns of Ghent and Bruges over the weekend. I’m going to write about those cities in part deux of this post. Belgium is unusual in that two languages are spoken and what you hear will depend on where you are in the country. Some areas are French speaking and some are Flemish. Let’s just say that trying to navigate trains and timetables in Flemish adds an element of adventure to the whole experience. We’re very comfortable travelling around over here but even so we forget sometimes that English is not used everywhere…you do remember that fact pretty quickly however when you are standing in a train station in a foreign city trying to get to another foreign city and none of the signs have anything even remotely like English on them. I’m always impressed at the ease with which my friends from other countries are able to switch between the two, three, or four languages they speak. Impressed and a little bit envious. Multilingualism is a skill I wish I possessed.


Anyway, I arrived in Brussels Thursday afternoon and my hubs met me at the train. We spent Thursday evening walking around the town, looking in the shops and planning what we would eat. They excel at chocolate, waffles and mussels in this country so it did require some planning. Honestly, there are shops like this one every few feet-

And there are kiosks like this all around the city too-

And little booths making smoutebollen which are sugared donuts, and in fact the whole shopping street closest to the Grand Place smells like someone’s mama has just pulled a tray of sugar cookies out of the oven. Good thing we walked about 45 miles this weekend.



The Grand Place is the main square in Brussels and it is magnificent. Beautiful buildings all the way round with lots of outdoor cafes where you can sit and enjoy the view. The centrepiece is the Hotel de Ville which is Brussels Town Hall.

The spire on this building was built in 1449 and stands 315 feet high. It is also slightly crooked.

More beautiful buildings flank the Hotel de Ville including Le Renard which was at one time the guildhouse of the haberdashers and La Maison des Boulangers with it’s very beautiful dome topped by a dancing golden figure and also Le Roi d’Espagne which offers a great view of the square.

Of course we walked down to the very famous Manneken Pis which is a funny little statue of a boy happily relieving himself into a small pool outdoors as little boys everywhere apparently love to do.

There are a few theories as to how this statue came to be but one of the most popular says that during a battle sometime back in the 1100’s the troops put the young son of a duke into a basket and then hung the basket in a tree to encourage the men. From this tree the little boy relieved himself onto enemy troops who eventually lost the battle. This is probably a whole lot more than you want to know about the little statue but it is a must see for everyone who comes to Brussels. In fact the Manneken has taken on a life of its own now and at different times of the year is dressed in costumes from around the world. Heads of state visiting Brussels have been known to bring miniature versions of their national dress for the statue and he now has over 400 outfits including an Elvis costume.

And I’m thinking that anything I write now cannot possibly compete with a cheeky little boy statue with his own Elvis costume so I’ll save the rest of our short break fun for tomorrow’s post.

Happy Easter...Joyce