Happy Greek Birthday Outing!!

I have a feeling this birthday location might be difficult to top.  Thanks TripAdvisor for helping us plan some new wonderful memories:

Crazy Greek Driving Observations

We had some interesting cultural observations while driving in Greece this week:

You have to yield IN roundabout.  This is absurd and completely backs up the feed roads.  Fortunately, we noticed before causing a massive accident:

There must be some sort of helmet law for motorcycles that requires drivers to carry a helmet.  We saw a bunch of guys on motorcycles carrying or holding their helmet.  It is apparently too inconvenient to wear on your head.  This guy put his in the basket on the back:

No one uses the sidewalk.  There are all sorts of random people on the streets when the sidewalk is completely empty.  Strange.

Speed limits appear to be suggestions.  The max speed is 60 km/hr, but most drivers are hitting 100 km/hr.

Similar to Rome, it appears you can park anywhere you want.  White and yellow lines are irrelevant:

Weekend in Greece

There are a few interesting experiences from Greece.

The landscape is just like you imagine...beautiful beyond belief and among the prettiest that we have ever seen.

Greeks eat dinner late - just like in most of Europe.  We found a lovely restaurant in Argostolion, and found ourselves as the only customers at 8pm.  It was run by a lovely Canadian/Greek women - imagine that:).  A few others showed up around 8:30 or 9:00, but it apparently doesn't get busy until 11pm or later.  Lucky us:

On Sunday, Mara had a tough day.  First thing in the morning, she bonked her head doing a headstand with Jeryn, then 30 minutes later - she was stung by a bee, and finally - she got sand in her eyes at the beach.  All three situations could have easily ended up in an Emergency Department visit, but thanks to Supermom, she was ok:)  and after we made her into a Mermaid:

A couple years ago, there was a major earthquake here.  It disrupted roads, many of which haven't been fixed.  As a result, the drive between Myrtos and Assos takes 45 minutes and contains a couple hundred switchbacks, instead of a short straight 5 minute drive.  The view was easily worth the trouble:

The beaches are stunning, but filled with rocks and pebbles.  They can be a bit painful to walk on, so bring your sandals:

Thanks for coming halfway around the world (literally) to come see us!!  Hope you had a wonderful Greek experience!

A Bank Holiday Weekend in Brussels

Bank Holidays are a nice invention.  I suppose it is like Labour Day or Memorial Day in America.  We made the best of it by tagging Belgium onto the end of a business trip.

Belgium is well known for its chocolate and beer.  We found them both to be quite nice:

It was difficult to determine the preferred language: people speak Flemish, Dutch, French, German, and most speak English.  Pretty amazing to be honest.  At some of the chocolate shoppes, the employees speak seven languages!?

Brussels has a lot of tourists- more than other well known European cities we have visited. We  noticed very large tour groups throughout Brussels.  Jeryn and Mara were stopped several times because of their blonde hair.  

Brussels is also famous for it's peeing statue: Manneken Pis:

Mara wanted her picture with the tourist version of the Manneken.  I hope this sign means that it is 1 Euro for a waffle:

Brugge, an hour by train from Brussels, is a beautiful city.  We ran into some unfortunate weather (in England, they would say this type of weather was "pants").  It would be a nice city to return to in the future for one of the famous boat rides.

As normal, a holiday in Europe equals a lot of walking.  Fortunately the girls are now used to it:)  I think we tend to forget that they have to take about 30-40% more steps than we do.  According to Fitbit, we walked 23,000 steps - so I guess that would be around 30,000 for the girls (or 11 miles/day).  Better than sitting in front of the TV:)