Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing
Belgium is big on comic books. When I saw this BOOM sweatshirt a few weeks before we moved here, I thought, “That looks comic-ish! I will buy it for my upcoming move to Comics Land. Now I am prepared.” This was ridiculous, it turns out, because it is actually perfectly suited to wear to an…
I was feeling down last week and served myself tea at a cafe table in my bedroom to try to duplicate the feeling of eating somewhere besides my house. It actually felt really peaceful, and that got me thinking—what are some other ways to duplicate the pre-COVID travel experience? I have some ideas for you….
The Belgian manifestation of the polar vortex resulted in a week of freezing temperatures and snow! I asked Isaac and Elo what they’d like to do on their day off and both kids agreed: THE GREENHOUSE at Meise Botanic Garden on the north side of Brussels. We first visited here last summer with friends and…
I was afraid Chocolate Nation would be cheesy along the lines of the embarrassingly-bad Historium in Brugge. It was not! In fact, it was great. We went on a weekday the kids and Chris had off, so we had the place almost to ourselves. We know a bit about cacao (Hawaii is the only state…
It’s that time of year when a 100 percent chance of rain could mean a single brief shower or a prolonged deluge. You know what they say: there’s no bad weather, only bad clothing. Clearly this theory is false. We try to live by it, but alas, some days we succumb to the rottenness of…
In high school one of our teachers held up a print of the classic surrealist painting “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Since we were high schoolers mostly studying Spanish, we sat there looking blank. Someone pulled out a French dictionary and translated it: “this is not a pipe.” We continued to be blank. The teacher…
Following the trends of 2020, we went ahead and got a cat. Pounce, the best of cats, passed away 18 months ago. We swore we wouldn’t get more pets while we stayed in the military, but for nine months, the kids ended their evening prayers every night by praying for a kitten. We went to…
