A Quick Pit-stop on the Mainland: Belgium and Luxembourg

I'm aware that this blogpost will expose me as the travel nerds we are, but you probably already knew that to a certain extent, so I'm going for it.  So far I've blogged about  Scotland (the first leg of our trip),  Northern Ireland (the third leg of our trip), and  Ireland (the fourth and final leg),  but we had a pitstop in Belgium/Luxembourg between Scotland and Northern Ireland.  Why?  Because  Glen had never been to either one of them and we thought we'd take advantage while we were in the "vicinity".  Of course, the term vicinity is being used lightly here since they were a plane ride away, but relatively speaking we were much closer to Belgium/Luxembourg than we normally are and inter-Europe flights on RyanAir can be found for  cheap.  

So we went for it.  

It was a pretty quick trip, because we didn't want to short-change the British Isles, but we ended up really enjoying this fun little foray into mainland Europe for a few days.  In fact, if you ask Glen what his favorite part of the trip was, he'll likely tell you that he loved all the places we visited, but Belgium was his favorite.  And we both agree that it definitely had the best food and that's not even close!

We arrived into the Brussels Charleroi Airport (the small airport RyanAir flies into) and immediately jumped on a bus to Ghent.   We chose Ghent, because we had time for one city and it had been one of our favorite stops when I took the kids to Belgium in 2019. 

We figured since we were only spending 2 nights in Belgium, that we should get a hotel as centrally located as possible.   The Ghent Marriott (right where my finger is pointing ) is located right on the canal and was ideal for exploring the city! 

We were very excited to locate a Belgian waffle place nearby THAT HAD GLUTEN FREE WAFFLES TOO!   I  might have been a bit giddy about that and we definitely stopped there a couple times!  They even had gluten free speculoos topping for it that made me extra happy.

I was excited to introduce Glen to the Ghent "noses" that we discovered on our last trip here.   They're a locally made gummy candy that resemble a nose shape, hence the name.   

They're decently good (especially when fresh), but, frankly, I was more excited by other Belgian foodie finds.  We ate well on this leg of our trip!   

Since we only had a short time in Belgium, we debated about the most effective way to see the sites.  Ghent is a fairly compact city, but we'd walk by things, and think, "Wow, that's beautiful," then not really know anything else about it.  

What we ended up doing is buying a Scavenger Hunt off of Trip Adviser, which was a perfect way to see the city.  It took us to all the big sites (and some smaller ones), would give us information about them when we arrived, and even had games/challenges we could try.

I liked that we could go at our own speed, taking time to go inside those places that interested us.  We definitely saw a lot more of the city than we would have just by wandering. 

I was flooded with nostalgia when the scavenger hunt brought us to this alley filled with graffiti.   I had totally forgotten that this was in Ghent and we have several pictures of Ellie and Adam here from 2019.   I actually love when cities provide graffiti zones where local artists can showcase their talents. 

Between the food, the gorgeous architecture, and the walkability of Ghent, we were pretty enamored.   

We were a little reluctant to leave here after just two days, but it was time for one last adventure on the mainland before heading back to the Isles.  

Early the next morning, we packed up our luggage and hopped on a train for Luxembourg.  

It was about a 4-hour train ride, but the scenery between Ghent and Luxembourg City was stunning...especially the closer to Luxembourg we got.  It was hard to take pictures on a moving train, but here was one that actually turned out okay. 

  

We only had about 24 hours in Luxembourg City, so we logged A LOT of miles trying to see as much as humanly possible in that 24 hours.  

Luxembourg City was definitely the least touristy of the cities we visited, which meant finding postcards was harder than even usual.    It's like sending snail mail is a dying art or something. 😆 I never did find very pretty postcards there, but I laughed A LOT when we came across this one...

I've shopped for postcards in a lot of different places before and had never seen that kind of humor expressed on a postcard before.  The only thing I could figure was that at some point maybe some postcard manufacturer got Luxembourg mixed up with Luxor, Egypt and they just decided to go with it and make into a joke postcard.   My kids were VERY confused when they got theirs and originally thought they were delayed postcards from our trip to Egypt in 2023 (which I still haven't blogged about)!  

Food was also a bit of a disappointment in Luxembourg, but luckily we had been well-fed in Belgium, so it was all good. 
 
Luxembourg City is built into deep gorges formed by two rivers, which means that it's really a multi-level city.

We found a glass elevator that would take us between the upper and lower parts of the city without exhausting ourselves!   

This was taken at one of the biggest attractions in the city...Bock Casemates and the view from there was pretty spectacular. 

In fact, we found ourselves in awe of the amazing view quite a lot while walking around the city. 

And I'd say that at least 50% of the photos we took in Luxembourg were of gorgeous overlooks like this one...

We were also  excited to run into missionaries in the short time we were there.  They were out with friends doing a running club and asked us to take a few photos for them.   We hadn't even noticed there missionaries among them when they first approached us to take their photo, but they were so cute when we all realized.   I think their friends were as excited to meet Mormons "in the wild" as the missionaries were!  It certainly made our day, especially since the last time I'd been in Luxembourg was when I was 14 and we stopped to visit my cousin, Scott, who was serving his mission there in 1987, so it seemed only fitting to see missionaries here again, nearly 40 years later! 

We very much enjoyed our time in both Belgium and Luxembourg...

But before we knew it, it was time to head back to the British Isles....Luxembourg to Belfast, then Dublin, then home...

And now, the trip blogposts are done, and I'm back to real life!

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Pinch Me..I'm in Ireland!

Next up on our travelogue...Ireland!   What can I say?    It was everything we'd hoped it would be...which was basically a country full of green (natural and man-made), stunning scenery,  and lots of personality!   We were enamored! 

On Saturday, we woke up early and took a tour bus along the Wild Atlantic Way.  Part of the route looked a bit like this with crazy hairpin curves that made us very glad that we weren't driving! 

We were very impressed with how green it was, despite it being the first week of March!

The end destination for our tour was out to the breathtaking Cliffs of Moher (also known as the "Cliffs of Insanity"--in case you happen to be Princess Bride fans.)     We very much enjoyed the  opportunity to see this iconic Irish site and we are pretty sure we saw a couple puffins while we were there, so that was cool as well!

Apparently, it's a somewhat regular occurrence that people die along the cliffs and, as such, they had many of the trails closed.  I'm not sure if they were seasonal closures or permanent, but this memorial was a sobering reminder not to do anything stupid...not that we are prone to doing stupid things...but, you know, just in case. 

After the Cliffs of Moher, we headed to the quaint little town of Galway!  We very much enjoyed wandering around this adorable place and Glen was quite excited/surprised to find the latest Brandon Sanderson book in the local bookstore. 

We had a full two hours to explore, but we wished we had scheduled a whole day.   

But, alas, we saw as much as we could in that 2 hours and then boarded the bus back to our hotel in Dublin. 

On Sunday we took a public bus to church...

and met a friend of a friend (Jen B.) there...

and saw the same sister missionaries we'd run into in Edinburgh the week before. 

It was a gorgeous day, so we  decided to walk back to the hotel, rather than taking the bus, so we could see more of the city.  

We started our trek back to the hotel by walking through the Glasnevin Cemetery and National Botanic Gardens, both of which were located very near the chapel.   

We really enjoyed our walk  through the National Botanic Gardens and were very much amazed at all the signs of spring, none of which were visible here in Utah when we returned, despite Dublin being full 12° latitude further north than Utah.  

We enjoyed the walk back through Dublin and spent the next day and half seeing as much as we could. 

On a whim, we  visited the National Gallery of Ireland when we realized that it had free admission...

Totally worth the spontaneous stop! 

We also visited the  Little Museum of Dublin after seeing a lot of advertisements for it and seeing it had good reviews on Trip Advisor, but we frankly found it a rip-off.   It was full of quirky exhibits like this tennis ball collection, as found by Dublin dogs...

and this one dedicated to U2...

and I don't even know what to say about this one...a little off-color/weird/who-the-heck-knows, but it mentions postcards, so that's up my alley at least!   All in all, worth maybe $5-7 to see, but we left feeling taken advantage of after the price we paid to be there! 

On the other hand, one of the highlights of our time in Dublin was EPIC-the of Irish Emigration Museum-and admission to it cost the same as the Little Museum, but was 100 times the better experience.   Honestly it was one of the better museums I've ever been to and I would totally recommend it for someone in Dublin who wants to learn more about Irish culture and heritage.

I didn't take many photos there, because it was so interactive, but here's one goofy one...

and one of the scenes you happen upon right after entering the museum...

To wrap up all about Ireland,  I'll finish up with a few more shots from around Dublin...

We had an absolutely lovely time in Ireland and would highly recommend a visit to anyone thinking about where to go next.    Then on Tuesday morning, we took the tram to the airport and took off for home.  Here's our final view of beautiful Ireland...

Stay tuned for one more trip blogpost to come.  Yes, yes, I know I said this was the end of the trip and that is true, but I still have one more leg - between Scotland and Northern Ireland - to post about.  😊

A Scottish Adventure

In 1987, when I was just 14-years-old, our family took a trip to Europe.  It was the oldest five of us kids, two friends, and my parents.  We didn't have a lot of money, but my Dad traveled a lot for work and saved his frequent flier miles for a long time  to make that trip happen.  It was frankly a somewhat miserable trip with long days crowded into a utilitarian van traipsing and tent-camping all over Europe, which was having one of the rainiest summers in European history.   But, it was during that trip that our eyes were open to a wider world than we ever had known before and I think I can say, without any hyperbole whatsoever, that  that trip literally changed all of our lives.   And my Dad knew that it would.   

I married someone who came from a family who pretty much never traveled, except for the occasional roadtrip to the family cabin in Idaho or for a beach trip out East (where both of his parents had grown up and still had a lot of family living out that way), but plane rides were not a thing.  Frankly, they weren't much of a thing in my upbringing either;  except for that one international trip, we always road-tripped wherever we were going.  And when our kids were young, we were the same,  zig-zagging all over the country in the car to visit family and explore new destinations on our annual summer vacation.  We always talked about taking an international trip with our kids, but always had a good excuse as to why it couldn't happen... we were too busy, travel was too expensive, the kids were too young, and on and on.   

Then Spencer got sick.   That sounds unrelated to all this, but it wasn't.   Spencer's leukemia was absolutely earth shattering to us and we came out of that time of our lives as fundamentally different people.   There's nothing like being told that your 16-year-old kid has a less than 50% chance of survival to help you realize that waiting for some elusive future perfect day to do something is a risky proposition.   If we wanted our kids to have certain experiences, we needed to stop putting them off and make them happen.    I consider his illness as the impetus for 1. homeschooling the kids, 2. finally remodeling our 1960's kitchen, 3. starting to travel internationally with our family.   Yes, we still had the same budget and time restraints that we'd had before, but we realized that we didn't want to look back with regrets and it was worth the sacrifice and belt-tightening it took to make these things happen.    

Since then, we've made travel a regular part of our lives.   Once again, this prioritization of travel does not come without sacrifice.  We still have to budget and cut back on other expenses to make this happen, but we have decided that the memories and exposure to other cultures that we gain in the process is worth that expense.  

So, all this introductory information is to bring me to this post about the trip we just returned from.   Glen served his mission in England and we'd always wanted to explore the rest of the British Isles (namely Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland), but had never done it before.  We'd been watching for good ticket prices to pop up for this route for forever and finally several weeks ago, a good deal popped up for the end of February and we jumped on it!   We were a little hesitant about traveling in the wintertime, but it was honestly great to be out of the crowds of the high season and I felt like we got better prices on tours and hotels this time of year as well. 

We flew into Edinburgh, Scotland (my 39th country)...

And then  walked straight out of the airport and hopped on a bus to Glasgow, where we stayed the night.   After checking into our hotel and  dropping off our luggage, we decided to explore Glasgow for a few hours.  Here are some random scenes from around Glasgow.   

We basically walked from our centrally located hotel (Motel One) up to the Glasgow Cathedral and Necropolis by walking along this Street Art Mural Trail that we found online.   We only had a few hours of daylight, so we didn’t hit them all, but saw enough that we got a good flavor of the art and style!

The area around the Glasgow Cathedral had more of the cute European vibe to it than the sections of the city we had walked through, so I was enchanted.   The cathedral was not open for visitors at the time, so we just walked around for a bit.  

But what I was most enchanted by in Glasgow was the cemetery behind the Glasgow Cathedral—called the Necropolis.   It was lovely to see from afar and even lovelier to see while walking around!  WE enjoyed the views from atop the hill and loved looking at the old headstones.   

After exploring, we headed to dinner where I was excited to hear the restaurant offered free tap water to drink.  While commonplace in the USA, in Europe, we usually pay outrageously for bottled water in restaurants, unless we happened to have refilled our water bottles recently.  

We only laughed a little when the water came out to us in tequila bottles!   haha!  We were so thirsty by this point, that we didn’t care about appearances and guzzled three of them!    Other than the free water, the Mexican restaurant we picked was a bust.  Their food was too spicy and not that great, even beyond the spiciness level.   

We woke up early the next morning and took the West Highland train from Glasgow to Fort William.  That particular train route into the Scottish Highlands is supposed to be one of the most scenic train routes in the world and we were a little sad that it was  rainy on the first part of our journey.  We still got a good enough glimpse to realize that it was stunningly gorgeous, but it was hard to capture it in photos.  

We stored our luggage and walked around Fort William...

And we laughed that the towns in the Scottish Highlands lie on a geologic fault called the Great Glen Fault, which meant that there were references to the Great Glen all over the place!  Glen, of course, loved that and  posed for a few goofy photos!  

After a few hours of walking around Fort William, we caught an evening bus to Inverness, where we spent the night.  The next morning we joined a tour and visited  Eilean Donan Castle...

Looked for Nessie along the shores of Loch Ness...

Saw lots of Highland cows and gorgeous scenery...

And went out to the Isle of Skye.   

The Scottish Highlands surpassed our expectations and I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance. 

After our tour, we stayed one more night in Inverness and then took the bus back to Edinburgh where we stayed for a couple days.   Here are some sights from around Edinburgh... Greyfriar's Abbey and Victoria Street were two iconic Scottish places to visit and we loved the bagpipers that set up all over town.  JK Rowling wrote her Harry Potter books while living in Edinburgh and many people think that Diagon Alley is based on Victoria Street (the brightly colored shops below)...

We visited the Scotland National Gallery of Art.  Here are a few of the pics we admired or that made us laugh a bit!  

We visited the Botanic Gardens and just enjoyed the old and stunning architecture around town...The statue of the dog is Greyfriar's Bobby (found at the Greyfriar's Abbey) and has a sweet story to go with it. 

All in all, we loved Scotland.   Glasgow was okay, but we really enjoyed the Highlands and Edinburgh.  

It was a fabulous first leg to our journey.   Stay tuned for more....