Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing
We got European license plates for our car just in time for our first European vacation—skiing in the Bavarian Alps! This is important, because we can’t cross international borders with Texas plates (too “exotic”), and our drive here to Garmisch took us from Belgium through Luxemburg, Germany, Austria and back into Germany again. I booked…
Walking Eloise to her French school on the other side of the metro station is my favorite thing to do in Belgium so far. At dawn and mid-afternoon we get a charming 20-minute walk together through Stockel town center. Three times a week—Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays—Place Dumon hosts a farmers market. If Chris is with me,…
J’aime la soupe! J’aime le potage! I like making it, I like smelling it while it simmers, I like eating it—it’s my favorite. I pick up Eloise at school and we walk through town and up the hill to our house, arriving at home around 4pm most days. Just in time to start something cooking….
The advantage of Chris’ wonky schedule is this: we found ourselves on a rainy Tuesday morning metroing merrily along toward the city center. Thunder boomed, creating a cozy moment of shared surprise among everyone in the metro car. Then we exited out into the cold and were cozy no more. Weeks ago, when we were…
Waterloo is about 20 minutes from our house in Brussels. Driving south, you can’t miss the giant Butte du Lion rising up over the gently undulating farmlands. The Dutch king erected it in the spot where his son, the Prince of Orange, was wounded in the Battle of Waterloo. Here on June 18, 1815, the…
I feel super clever right now. I finally fixed an ongoing issue that prevented me from uploading photos to my blog from my phone. This has been hassling me for years! FOR YEARS. The key is whether it KEEPS working now, eh? Clearly we are living in a hotel. It’s freakin freezing outside (to us)…
Diamond Head was named for something sparkly someone thought might be diamonds. News flash: it wasn’t diamonds. Hawaiians had already named it something more sensible: Le’ahi, which is the shape of the head of a fish the volcanic cone resembles. Anyway, the second namer discovered at some point that all that flashes and sparkles in…
