Week 67 July 21-30 Budapest

In mid July, we had a four day weekend because of Belgian National Day.  We decided to make the most of it and make a trip to Budapest, Hungary.  July and August are the summer vacation months for schools in Belgium.  Europeans take their summer vacations seriously so we were excited to at least have a small break considering all of our colleagues have been going on two to three week long adventures.  For the first time, we flew out of Eindhoven, a small city in the Netherlands that has a few budget airlines.  It is very close to where we work so we were able to head straight to the airport after work on Wednesday.  We took Wizz Air, a Hungarian airline.  We made it to Budapest around 8 and headed to our AirBnb.  Our host gave us a suggestion of a small Italian place close by for dinner so we didn't have to venture too far that evening.  The apartment was pretty nice aside from a slightly uncomfortable bed.  The BEST part was that the couple who owned the Airbnb also owned a cafe in Budapest.  Each morning we had a coupon for a free croissant with jam and a cappuccino.  There were also many other good items on the menu and we always added a little something to our croissant meal.  It was a delicious way to start each day.
  

Our morning coffee

We started out our first full day in Budapest with a free walking tour.  Apparently, all the other tourists thought that was a good idea as well, so we had a small wait while they split the tour group into three.  Budapest is split into two sides across the river from each other.  The Buda side is a bit more hilly and rocky, while the Pest side is flat.  The tour started on the Pest side where we learned some of the tumultuous history of Hungary as well as attempted to learn the language (HA!).  They took us through Pest and across the famous Chain Bridge to the Buda side.  Most of the famous Buda tourist stops are at the top of Castle Hill.  We climbed to the top to see the view of the city below and a few of the top sites.  The tour ended here, and we headed to find lunch.  It was a little touristy in this area but we were able to find a spot for typical Hungarian food, including stuffed cabbage.  After that we headed to Matthias Church and the Fisherman's Bastion, both of which are on the top of the hill.  Molly made a rookie mistake and wore a spaghetti strap dress without a cover-up and was required to wear a paper napkin shawl throughout the church.  We think it might be the next biggest thing in fashion.  After our tour of the church and a climb to the top of the bell tower, we were pretty exhausted, so we found a terrace to overlook the city and enjoy a drink.  Our Airbnb host had mentioned a restaurant on the Pest side of the river that served craft beers that he thought we might like.  We decided to walk that way as we continued to enjoy the sites.  It was a perfect suggestion for us because their main fair was BBQ!!!  Tyler had ribs and Molly had chicken wings and the beer was pretty good too!  After dinner, we headed to a nearby ice cream shop that serves their cones with the ice cream designed in a rose shape.  Super touristy, but a must-do!

 Matthias Church 

Sporting a paper napkin shawl

The Fisherman's Bastion

A peak at the parliament building

Chain Bridge

Rose shaped ice cream

On Friday, after our breakfast, we headed to St. Stephen's Basilica on the Pest side.  The namesake of the church, St, Stephen, was the first king of Hungary.  The most interesting, if not bizarre, thing in the church is St. Stephen's mummified hand that is kept in the chapel.  We made sure to view his hand before climbing this dome as well.  It was 364 steps to the top and we were able to view from the Pest side.  After the climb, we were a bit hungry so we headed to the Market.  It is a giant indoor market that sells various produce and meats.  They also had small restaurant stalls on the second level.  We actually weren't able to eat there because it was so crowded, but we looked around and headed elsewhere for lunch.  After lunch, we had a scheduled tour of the parliament building.  The Hungarian Parliament is one of the most amazing buildings we have ever seen from the exterior.  The interior presented much of the same grandeur as well as the crown jewels.  After the tour we made a stop by the river to see the shoes on the Danube memorial and explored the waterside before heading to dinner.  We went to a wonderful Italian place for dinner that we were so lucky to get a table at.  We walked in pretty early and they gave us the last non-reservation table.  We witnessed so many people get turned away being told there were no openings for three weeks.  The meal was delicious and included all kinds of gifts from the chef.  We thoroughly enjoyed the meal as well as the service.  It isn't common you get that kind of experience with the acceptable price tag!  After our dinner, we headed to the sunset boat tour that we had scheduled.  The boat tour was extremely touristy but one of our favorite things we did on this trip.  They drove us up and down the Danube and spoke about the history and the various buildings we were passing.  We were mesmerized by the sight of the skyline at sunset and were so glad we chose to go on the cruise.

St. Stephens

The Castle in the distance

Ready for our Parliament tour

The Market

The Parliament at night

Castle and Chain bridge at night

On Saturday, we headed to the Varosliget park, the big city park of Budapest, were the Szechenyi Thermal Baths are located.  The thermal baths were incredible, with over 20 different baths in the facility.  We stuck mainly to the outdoor baths as the weather was too warm to be interested in hot indoor baths but we could imagine the appeal in the dead of winter.  We spent a few hours soaking in the water and soaking up the sun until it looked like it might rain.  We headed to lunch and explored the park and Vajdahunyad Castle within the park.  As we were leaving the park, a major rain storm started and we ended up running home in the rain.  We were soaking wet!  After the rain cleared up and we had showered and put on new dry clothes, we headed to the Jewish Quarter to experience the Ruin Bars.  Ruin bars started becoming popular about 10 years ago and are set up in old cellars or abandoned buildings.  They don't really spruce them up, and they are filled with interesting artwork and old things.  We thought it was really cool.  The one we spent the most time in, had a wonderful court yard and lots happening.  We stayed for a few drinks and some good people watching before heading to enjoy a food truck dinner.  Our favorite food choice was a langos, a Budapest special of fried pizza-like dough with garlicy sour cream and shredded cheese on top.  It surely isn't too healthy but it was soooo good!

Heroes square

The baths

A quick cake snack

Ruin bar

Food truck dinner!

We didn't have much time on Sunday but we wandered the city a bit and picked up a few souvenirs before heading to the airport to head back to Antwerp.  We had heard a lot of good things about Budapest and all were true.  It was an amazing city and we would definitely go back for another visit!

Week 63 June 16-23

We had a few weeks to recover from our fun-filled May, and then June got exciting as well.  Mom and Dad Wilkerson came for a week-long visit to Belgium!  Their experience was an authentic one from the start.  Just as their trans-Atlantic flight landed, the baggage handlers decided to go on strike.  We began to consider leaving the airport to return sometime later for the bags, but the strike finally ended and the bags were released after about a three hour delay. The rest of the trip went a bit more smoothly.  We toured many of the Antwerp hot-spots together, some of which we had never visited before!  One such site was The Cathedral of Our Lady.  This central cathedral of Antwerp is a massive structure and an iconic symbol of the city.  We walk past this church nearly every week, but we had never made the trip inside.  From the Rubens masterpieces to the uniquely decorated alters for each guild, it was worth the visit.

The Wilkersons are here!

The Cathedral

The artwork was amazing

  We also took a nice day-trip to Bruges and a quick tour of the city where we work, Turnhout.  Unfortunately, we also experienced a lot of classic Belgian weather (rain).  There were several times when we got pretty wet, but we enjoyed our time nonetheless.

Robin & Tyler in Bruge 

Tyler & Tim braving the rain

Aside from the weather, it was overall a very exciting time to visit Belgium.  Every 4 years, Europe hosts a month-long soccer tournament with most of the national European teams competing.  The buzz around the tournament this year was very high, as the Belgian team had come in with the number one ranking.  The action had kicked off just days before the Wilkerson clan arrived, so while they were in town, we got to watch several important matches together.  The atmosphere in Antwerp was great, with many "fan-zones" for watching the matches setup in public squares and with Belgium flags and colors flying all over town.  Even when watching a match from our apartment, we could hear the roar of the crowds every time Belgium put one in the back of the net.  The final outcome of the tournament was a bit of a disappointment (Belgium didn't win), but it was a fun to be a part of such an exciting national experience.

The Belgian colors on display

Molly cheering on Belgium with her free swag

A short week later, and we were saying goodbye to our visitors.  It is always great to have friends and family come to visit to remind us of all the great people in our life and to bring us a little taste of home.

Week 58 May 13-22

We had a week back at work and then it was on to another vacation.  This time to Norway!  Molly's Mom and our good family friends, Steve, Karen and Allison, made the trip to Europe to spend a week with us.  They started their adventure in Amsterdam, where we met them on Friday.  We met at an apple pie shop to start the morning off right! Then, we explored the city and headed to the Van Gogh museum to check out some art.  Last time we were in Amsterdam, we missed the Van Gogh museum so we were excited to get see it this time.  It was a very interesting look into the short life of Van Gogh, and it was amazing to see the work he was able to complete within such a relatively small amount of time.  Many of his well known works are in other museums, but this  museum is filled with his family's collection.  After the museum, we tried out Indonesian food for dinner (turned out to be like a tangy Chipotle bowl) and started an interesting/stressful adventure to our hotel (couldn't find the right bus and didn't have the right tickets once we did) close to the airport to get ready for our adventure to Norway!

Pie, the best way to start vacation

We were up early and after a stop over in Copenhagen, we landed in Bergen, Norway, our home for the first few days of the trip.  Bergen is the second largest city in Norway and is located on one of the many fjords.  We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and we spent the rest of the day getting checked into our hotel, then wandering around to get our bearings in the city.  Our hotel had an awesome Norwegian waffle hour every afternoon complete jam and cream! We might have taken advantage of this option a few times.  On Sunday morning, we got up and headed for the cable car that would take us to the top of Mount Ulriken.  We did a 10 mile hike that took us from Mount Ulriken to the peak of Mount Floyen.  We were treated to beautiful views of the mountains, mountain top lakes and the city and fjords below us.  We were humbled by all of the Norwegians trail RUNNING the very difficult trail that we struggled to walk/climb.  Exhausted at the end of the hike, we took the funicular at Mount Floyen to return to the city and stopped at a local Norwegian restaurant for beer and typical Norwegian food.  Tyler got the opportunity to eat a whale steak and really enjoyed it.  For all of those shocked that we would eat whales, they were sustainably fished in Norway and it was not an endangered type whale... plus it was really tasty!

Bergen from above

Proof we did the hike!

And proof Tyler was there too

Post hike drinks

On Monday, we explored the many parks of Bergen and did the Rick Steves' walking tour to learn about the history of the vikings and people of Bryggen.  Bryggen is an area of commercial buildings near the wharf in Bergen that were built by the Hanseatic League.  Bryggen is a UNESCO world heritage site and the buildings are an iconic image of Bergen.  We had lunch at the fish market and a very fancy dinner with farm to table offerings.

Bryggen

The old church with a cannonball stuck in it

Fish market

Tuesday was Norwegian National Day.  We took the ferry from Bergen to Balestrand, a town of 2,000 people on the Sogne fjord.  Before leaving Bergen, we saw many people headed to celebrate in their traditional Norwegian dress and heard them fire the cannons in celebration.  The ferry to Balestrand was not just a means of transportation, it was also a wonderful way to see the Norwegian scenery.  The mountains rising sharply out of the water are amazing, and there were many large waterfalls dumping the winter snow melt into the fjords.  When we arrived in Balestrand, a few of us were able to hurry and see the end of the small Balestrand parade for the National Day.  After a nice lunch, we took a long walk around the town and into the surrounding hills before calling it an early night.  On Wednesday, Karen, Steve and Allison went in search of their family roots.  They were able to find some signs of Karen's family name as well as see many interesting things along their adventure.  We, along with Mandy, headed up into the mountains around Balestrand.  We had heard there was a difficult hike that would lead us to the peak of the mountain, and that there would be substantial snow still on the ground.  We were able to borrow two sets of snow shoes from the hotel and heard there would be another set to borrow along the trail somewhere.  We set off up the mountain.  We hiked about 1.5 miles (straight up!) before we hit snow.  We all strapped on our snow shoes (we did find an extra set) for the first time and gave it a whirl.  We had a great time and were able to hike for about another mile before the visibility was too bad and we were pretty cold.  We headed back down the mountain with a stop for lunch along the trail.  We were back into the city relatively early.  We took short naps and enjoyed the views from the hotel.  As we were heading for dinner, our friends returned from their adventures, and we were all able to eat together and swap stories of the day's adventures.

On the ferry on Norwegian National Day

The view from our hotel in Balestrand

Headed up the mountain

They are ready to snowshoe

 On Thursday, we visited the Balestrand aquarium before boarding the ferry toward Flam.  After another amazingly beautiful ferry ride, we landed in Flam to begin part of the Norway in a Nutshell tour.  This tour is done by most people visiting Norway in order to see the scenery and travel between Bergen and Oslo.  Prior to starting the train ride, we had a delicious lunch and brews at a local brewery in Flam.  We then boarded the Flam railway to take us to Myrdal.  It was a very scenic ride where it felt like the train was literally clinging for life to the side of the mountain at times.  There was a stop at the spectacular Kjofossen waterfall with a strange dancing siren sighting before arriving in Myrdal.  We took another scenic train ride to get from Myrdal to Oslo through high mountains where there were insane amounts of snow still remaining in May.

Buddies

Balestrand

The only trolls we saw in Norway were figurines :(

The Kjofossen waterfall

Molly's dinner on the train... hot dog with mashed potatoes...yes, the potatoes are the bun...

Oslo was the final stop on our trip.  We spent the night in a hotel with tiny rooms that efficiently made use of every inch of space.  We had one full day in Oslo and unfortunately the weather was not very cooperative.  We explored the city and did another Rick Steves' walking tour and paused to watch young sailors-in-training learning to sail in the harbor.  In the afternoon, after spending the morning in the drizzly outdoors, we made a visit to the Viking ship museum to spend some time inside.  It was fascinating to see the ships that had been unearthed from their burial grounds.  The vikings made sure they honored the dead with quite a haul.  Our final stop in Oslo was the Ice Bar!  It was a bar where everything was made of ice. We didn't stick around long because it wasn't a very comfortable environment but it was very cool to visit.  We all decided it would not be where we wanted to bar tend.  We then made our way to the airport hotel that we stayed prior to our early flights home.

The Royal Palace

A Greenpeace demonstration outside the palace

I think we could have watched this construction project all day. #dorks

Viking ship

The ice bar!

Karen and Allison enjoying their icy drinks

Our trip to Norway was Tyler's first big vacation with Karen, Steve and Allison.  Luckily, he fit in perfectly and even added some directional skill to the group!  We had a great trip with our adventure family and it was a great way to experience Norway.  We feel really fortunate to have had two back-to-back trips with some of our favorite people from the US that we do not get to see very often!