Coming home.... and other interesting life changes...!

Well, our year in Belgium is rapidly coming to an end... Who would have thought that 12 months could fly by so quickly? We came with the intention of spending a year here, if it was a total disaster we were committed to 6 months to give it a good go, and if we enjoyed it and a few details fell into place, we were open to spending a bit longer here.  After all it did take 2 plus years of planning including getting the king's signature on the paperwork to get here in the first place.  As it turns out, life likes to keep us on our toes and we are coming home under circumstances we hadn't foreseen!

So here is the plan: We are moving back to NZ in 4 weeks time!!! I know that is awfully soon, but we really only made the decision in the last 3 weeks and it has been a bit hectic since then as you may be able to imagine.  More specifically we are moving back to Snells Beach where we have family and accommodation readily available.  Snells Beach is a typical, idyllic seaside NZ town about an hour north of Auckland.  It's not going to be terribly painful to be based here for a wee while especially as we will be leaving mid european winter to mid NZ summer.


Hubby will be working in Australia for a few weeks once we move back before taking some "holiday" time off and then seeing what the options are after that.   One of which is another move back to Brisbane for some ambitious career opportunities for both of us around mid year.

The next few weeks (few being the key word here!) will be rather busy organising packing up an entire house (again), and trying to make arrangements in NZ for the the kids and me. As well as trying to squeeze in as much as we can in the time we have left in Brussels.

Some definite regrets about leaving... We have truly had a fantastic time in Brussels.  I know it may not compare to the splendid glamour of Paris but Brussels as a city, is one of stunning sites in its own right. After a year here, we have not got bored of this city and leave it with much of it still unexplored and under-appreciated.  The kids have had an amazing cultural and language experience that few get the chance to have. Another 6 to 12 months would have been perfect to really cement their language acquisition. But I could not be prouder of them all for integrating into their french schools so quickly and easily (even if little D has refused to speak to his teacher since this school year started in September!).  And how can we not be a teeny tiny bit sad about leaving this majestic continent with all it has to offer in sightseeing, culture and history?  As for me, my hopes of fluency in french have not come to pass. It is much better than when I arrived and my everyday dealings are 100% in french. We have had the benefit of living in a low expat (zero english speaking) area, so even if it is pretty darn obvious that my french requires work, I have really appreciated that they don't tend to automatically convert to english (since they speak none in general).

At the same time, we have many many things to look forward to by leaving. Family, friends, friends and friends, coffee, food, beaches, coffee, sun, a system that we know and that isn't unnecessarily complicated, coffee. And have I mentioned how much we are looking forward to decent coffee? This may have been heightened since our home machine started breaking down recently. It is now almost passable after hubby spent 2 to 3 days performing micro-surgical repairs on it - desperate times, desperate measures!

So as we get ready to leave, there are things that will be highlights and lowlights.  Oh my, we are getting to experience a european christmas. Now that is one thing to be thoroughly thankful for. The decorations, lights, festivals and markets are just amazing. I will write more on this with photos once its a bit closer to the day. IF we are extremely lucky we will get some snow and have a white christmas.

Lowlights are of course the beaurocratic system which is still as painful as ever, but not as much of a shock this time round.  Our ID cards expired at the end of November. I had hoped that we could get some sort of letter of extension as we will be leaving only a month later, but obviously that is far too logical and simple a solution for this country. So without a word of complaint (I am used to this place now), I went about collecting the 6 different bits of documentation that were required to apply for new cards.  One of these, was a letter from the Social Services department to say that we had not received any benefits.  The mind boggles as to why this sort of thing is not on a computerised system with centralisation in the 21st century, but it pays not to question such things.... Anyway, the process to collect this piece of paper to say I did not receive benefits involved me visiting an office which was only open between 9-11am. Then being told, I was in the wrong place, and I had to go to another office by way of small unsigned pebble path round the side of an old folks rest home (who would have thought?!). Arriving there, I was again told I was in the wrong place and had to go to the office across the street. Once there, I was finally in the correct place and they helpfully wrote my details down to order the documentation for 3 days time.  Dutifully, 3 days later, I turn up at the place where I had ordered the document from. How silly of me?! Of course this was not the correct place to go! I had to go across the road to building number 2. Once here, they told me they hadn't recorded my ID number and therefore had not produced the document for me. Thank goodness and contrary to all previous belgian experiences, the lady offered to do it then and there. 5 minutes later, I had it in my hand and was told I had to return to building number 3 to get it signed. Crossing the road again, the powers that be in building 3 informed me that no, in fact the people in building 2 were responsible for signing this piece of paper. Crossing the road for the 4th time I finally achieved success.  So, all it took was visits to 7 offices to get a piece of paper that says I have never received social security benefits in this country..... nothing like a bit of efficiency ;).  This sort of thing may have driven me slightly mad at the beginning of the year, but now I am just resigned to expecting things to be as complicated as they can possibly make them.  Now the big question of course, is how difficult will it be to actually leave the country?!

So as to other life events... It turns out that my efforts at gardening and growing stuff here have been an abysmal failure:

But it appears that I have been rather successful in cultivating a wee brussel sprout.  Of course anyone would be excused in suspecting that the recent weight gain may be entirely due to my excessive chocolate consumption (now at levels never previously seen), but the evidence suggests other reasons...

And low and behold there is a wee sprout in there... (sorry for the poor image quality)

Baby ponky #5 will be arriving shortly after we get back to NZ... and hence our main reason for returning sooner than anticipated :).

Of course, hubby helpfully pointed out that this will be the 3rd of 5 pregnancies that we have made major national or international moves during. We have already done an international move during 1st trimestre, a long distance national move during 2nd trimestre and this will be our first international move during 3rd trimestre pregnancy. It seems an appropriate way to complete a pattern. This time at least we are moving all together. The previous two pregnancy moves I packed up the house and moved with babies while pregnant alone after hubby had already gone on ahead for work purposes.

So we are quietly ecstatic about coming home and for the first time having a baby surrounded by family.  It helps that the kids are excited on both counts and as far as this year has been.... Its been a wonderful and worthwhile experience that we will forever treasure.

La Rentree- back to school time!

Well, considering we are less than a week away from the end of the first term, I am a little slow in updating our start to the new school year here!

We had finished off last year on a pretty good note and things had settled into a pattern of sorts. I knew that after spending 2 months completely in English, starting back into a complete French immersion school would take a little bit of re-adjustment. Turns out, a few more unexpected re-adjustments were needed.  During our time in England a couple of weeks before school started back, I received "the call".  This is the call I had been waiting for but had by now given up on ever receiving... Great news- the big two had places in the local school, which conveniently is located directly across the street from our apartment. Literally a 2 minute walk to school from our place!  I grabbed it immediately. There were no places for the little two, so we started the new school year with the big two crossing the road to school, and me taking the little ones by bus or tram to their old maternelle. There were some logistics to overcome, like attempting to be in two places at the same time for pick up... but overall, things were looking up. 

By the Friday of the first week back at school , I got the second call and amazingly I had got places for the little two at the local maternelle as well.  It is separate location so not quite as convenient as having all 4 in the same building to drop off and pick up, but still within walking distance. The maternelle is a brisk 10 minute walk when they take their scooters, a meandering 15 minute walk when they are walking/dawdling or falling to pieces, and a laborious 18 minute walk if I have to carry one of them... 

Once again, they all had to adapt to new schools, new teachers, new systems and new friends.  All navigated in French. Quite remarkable really. So here are some observations on our school life so far this year:

1) This was our first experience of a "first day of school year" so I wasn't sure how it would all work. It turns out that it is pretty much the standard Belgian way- parents are removed as soon as feasible and the kids are organised by the teachers and staff and all seems to work out. What this meant for primary was that parents were not allowed to cross a certain line in the main reception area. The kids then had to go towards their respective courtyards and wait to be put into classes.  As mine are in 3e and 5e they were in different courtyards and my heart was heavy knowing they were each going into the unknown completely alone and with still very rudimentary French. 
2) The new maternelle has mixed classes of 2e and 3e, so although S and D are in separate classes they are both in the same mix of ages. This works out well for S who just turned 5 and is in 3e, but D who is still 3 and in 2e and is the youngest in his year level, I am not sure how this is going to work out. He is in a class with kids some of whom who will be turning 6 in January, almost 2 years older than him, and he is by far the smallest but does not take kindly to being treated like a baby (or being patted on the head as the big kids are apt to do).
3) As seems to be the standard, school gates are shut and locked at precisely 8:30am. It appears tardiness is NOT tolerated. You cannot actually get into the school unless you contact the directeur/directrice.  I have not yet been in this position as I have been sufficiently freaked out about being locked out!  Parents also cannot access the school secretary after 10am most mornings except by appointment. I made appointments to actually meet the primary teachers, but otherwise direct contact time is nil except by appointment and at the scheduled parent-teacher interviews.
4) Homework is legally kept to a minimum, although not all schools abide by this rule.  No homework is allowed in maternelle and years 1-2; 20 minutes maximum per day in years 3-4 and 30 minutes in years 5-6. I have to say that I do LOVE this rule, as my experience of homework in Australia was that it was excessive and ridiculous.
5) The school hours are short (compared to other countries).  They start school at 8:30 and finish at 3:15pm, except Wednesdays when they finish at 12 noon. But on top of that they have an hour and a half for lunch break every day except weds, plus morning tea break.  they are actually allowed to come home during the lunch break if they wanted to.  I am not quite sure when they get their work done but they seem to do pretty well academically compared to other western nations.
6) The culture or philosophy is quite unique (to my mind).  There is a lot of emphasis on respecting the individual child's rhythms.  Whether this is during the day, season or developmental stage of life.   It is strongly repeated right from maternelle through primary and says to me that the education system follows the cultural norms where kids are respected for where they are at individually rather than being expected to conform to a uniform standard. In saying that, it is not at all individualistic. They are all expected to perform all the tasks as requested and to participate to their full ability.  It seems to work, and better than any system I have seen elsewhere in some respects.
7) My eldest recently won her year level cross country race. Being in a large school, I presume this was a considerable feat, also given she is by far the smallest in the year. However, I knew from the previous years experience that parental interaction is not allowed. So although, we were told the day of the crosscountry, there was no information about venue or what time and certainly parents were not invited or allowed to attend. There seem to be select events that the parents are allowed to experience any part of the school life- fetes, concerts, parent-teacher interviews and end of year awards/results day.  I guess this means that for working parents there are not the endless requests and requirements for parental attendance and interaction that can become overwhelming.  It takes some time and experience to get used to this cultural shift though and the underlying expectation is that parents trust the school/teachers to take care of their children and that they will be informed of any issues (in a no news is good news kind of way).  Obviously over-involved helicopter type parents should steer well clear of francophone countries!

8) My older two are also learning nederlands (dutch) so in fact will have 3 languages to some degree by the time we leave. This has been great so far as nederlands is far closer to English and being the 3rd language they are picking it up faster than most of the French kids. Scoring well in their tests has so far been relatively easy which is great for confidence.
9) I was surprised to find out that C class teacher (5e) does not speak any English, like none. How is this possible? But it shouldn't surprise me. The primary secretary/admin speaks not a word of English or the other official bruxelloise language -Flemish.  And I suspect the other teachers also speak limited to zero English. Which is ok, I am managing to express myself and making good use of google translate in my written communications!


There are other definite improvements other than the closeness to home - the maternelle has grass! And a proper playground and looks like a normal school rather than an inner city concrete jungle.

All up, their French seems to be making improvements. 5e is obviously very difficult to be undertaking without the basics, but so far C has been making good progress. Given that the work is stretching my university level French abilities, I am really pleased with what she is accomplishing so far.  O in 3e has a much easier time, as the grammar is still being taught in the beginning stages, so although she doesn't have the basic language and vocabularly background, she is probably managing pretty well independently in the class. S in maternelle 3 is doing great, her teacher looked at me quite surprised when I asked if she was speaking in French as if to say "of course she is". D as the youngest is having a harder time this year and it may be that his teacher is not the best fit for him. He is struggling to communicate with the other kids and as they are quite a bit older, the level of communication requirements is significantly higher than last year when he was in with 2-3 year olds. 

As well as back to school, has come all the after school activities.   Arriving in January, we soon found out that you could enrol in NOTHING until the start of the new school year (Sept), so I made sure I was prepared to enrol at the required days that they had.  Luckily I have managed to get all 4 into gymnastics in the same club. The older two are in the training squad which trains 5.5 hours/week (Weds and Fri pms) and the younger two are doing kindi gym which is 1.5 hours on a Friday evening. Fridays are a bit of a write off but they seem to get a second wind and manage to get through it and enjoy it! While I get to actually watch them from the upstairs cafe (the ONLY activity that lets parents watch and I think this is only by default because the venue has large windows and a café). The older two are also doing music theory - a system called Solfege, apparently very well known method- which is twice a week, compulsory for at least 2 years if they also want to play an instrument, and then they are both doing violin lessons once a week as a pair.  The best bit is that the music and violin lessons are in the Music academy that is part of the school directly across the road from us, and they are completely free. I couldn't pass up this sort of opportunity and they seem to be coping with the amount of after school activities so far..... And of course it is all done in French so they get the added benefit of being exposed to new vocabularly and language related to music and gym/movement several times a week as well as interacting with the other French kids in these classes.

Anyway, it has been a very busy first term and we are looking forward to a complete break for the holidays before term 2 starts.... We have to prepare ourselves for winter coming up. the weather here has still been very mild without much need for jackets, and so far it has only rained one day at school pick up.  I feel very fortunate.  But I am guessing I need to be prepared to do the school walk in the rain at least a few times over winter.

Surprise birthday adventures - reconnecting with old friends and new!

So it was hubby's 40th birthday this year. Quite a lot of pressure really. How does one celebrate such a momentous occasion, especially after having shifted to the other side of the world from all our friends and family?! Boys weekends, lavish parties, extended family celebrations are only possible if you actually have people who live in the same time zone and preferably in the same country to invite.  Not so much fun doing it by yourself. 

Not to worry, I put on my thinking cap early on, to ponder what would he really enjoy?  Certainly he loves a big party but short of winning a lottery that we hadn't entered to fly special people over, this was not going to happen.  Instead I reached out to some of his very special old friends from his school and medical training days to try and arrange a boys weekend. After months of negotiating (secret emails, facetime etc, all very clandestine - I could have been a spy) we had organised a family get together in Oxford with two of his best friends from South Africa. One was actually already living with his family in the UK but we hadn't caught up with him yet.  He was also immigrating to Canada the day after our arranged weekend get together so he had to be crazy organised to make this happen. These two had not seen each other since medical school - 16 years ago or so. They hadn't met me or our kids and I hadn't met his wife or 2 kids either. His other friend made a wonderful effort to fly into Oxford from South Africa with his son, whom we hadn't met either. We had last seen this friend on his wedding day over 8 years ago. 

As hubby is rather fond of surprises, I made a concerted effort to keep most of the arrangements a surprise.  He knew we were going to England to catch-up with his UK based friend and his family, but he erroneously thought we were staying in London. An option that was not all that appealing to either of us (London is not one of our favourite places). In the end, I did break the news that we were in fact not going to London, but instead to Oxford just a couple of days before leaving and this heightened his mood substantially. Oxford is just one of those places that inspires the imagination and we were both excited to see it for ourselves.

To get there, we took the Eurostar for the first time, and this is something I HIGHLY recommend. Although if you are in the slightest bit suspicious in your plans, it may prove difficult as we were absolutely grilled at the UK border patrol in Brussels. Arriving in London and having to make our way from St Pancras International station to Paddington was, as expected, a horrid and depressing experience. We were happy to leave London quickly.  4 children and luggage in overcrowded stations does not make for a relaxed or pleasant transit.

We arrived at the amazing house that our Sth African friend had arranged for our stay and were greeted as arranged by our UK based friend and family. And then we staged the best surprise yet where hubby's Sth African friend came out of one of the rooms to greet him.  Old friendships were rekindled like no time had passed. Years were caught up on and family stories and adventures swapped.  Not surprisingly, the weekend was spent mostly reconnecting with little actual tourist type behaviour. 



Relaxing with books- staying in the house of an Oxford professor means there are 100s of interesting books to read.









Game playing before it deteriorates into mayhem when D decided to take the cards hostage.

















Old buddies.... and a small extra (where did she come from?)




They could almost be related with those eyes!

Oxford was actually bigger than I had anticipated so there was a lot of walking which became a little difficult with two little ones in tow, who were not particularly happy about the amount of trecking around.  But we did do some punting on the river.  I am not quite sure whether I would call this activity as relaxing as it makes out to be. I think the tourist brochures are lying.  There was a certain level of heightened anxiety that one of the 5 children may accidentally fall in the water or capsize one of the boats. Also, the actual punting is NOT as easy as it looks and I spent some time concerned that hubby would actually fall in.  In the end, the only casualty were his sunglasses that disappeared into the depths just as we were returning the boat.  We also managed to make it through a Sunday evensong. It would have been a beautiful solemn event, but these things lose a bit of their impact when having to coax and cajole 4 small children into not uttering a sound for an hour. Mine can barely stop talking for 5 minutes, so 1 hour is actually an exceedingly looong time to remain mute for. This was topped off by the best pizza we had had to date, made by a small sidewalk pizza vendor, and of course far better than anything we ate in Italy (this may be a re-occurring theme now...).

Our UK friends left after the weekend for their big move to Canada.  Their two kids are older than ours and so the transition to a new country and culture and being uprooted from their friends is an even more difficult process. It was wonderful to meet them after all these years and it may be many more years before we meet again.















The next few days were all about kids, kids, noise, kids, noise, and lots of catching up with F and his son who at 5 years old was slightly older than S.









We took a trip to the dinosaur museum, which I know has an official name, but will henceforth be known as the dinosaur museum and the kids had a ball.




Before long, it was over and goodbye to Oxford and F and co. Next time we visit Oxford we will get to see a bit more of the majestic buildings and sites, but for this trip, the highlights were the old taxis (extremely entertaining for my lot) and the wonderful cafes and shops that sold all the types of food, coffee and goods that you don't really get in Belgium.  But at the end of the day, it wasn't the location that made it, but the company. And that's how it should be I think.

 

The last couple of days we took a train to the north of England to visit new friends who had recently moved to the UK from Australia. Their daughter had been in C's year at school and they were also a "large" family with 4 kids.







We had a fantastic relaxed time connecting and sharing common experiences, lots of moaning about Belgian idiosyncracities, the inept health care systems around the world, and of course lots of laughs.  The kids (eight of them in one house!) were basically not seen or heard for 2 days straight (a perfect way to spend a holiday!). 
We dined at Jamie Oliver's restaurant, which started off with very high expectations. The food was ok, but they had some fantastic kids menu concepts and décor.











Despite the cold temperatures, the kids spent their time mostly outside.  We introduced them to Netflix, they introduced us to Breaking Bad, so all up it was a fair exchange of addictive activities.  

 

My troops were all besotted by the animals. O in particular became attached to their dog (poor dog) and almost refused to let it go.

It was wonderful holiday with a wonderfully hospitable family. We are hoping to show them some of Brussels when they make it across the channel!

Of course we missed our train home. But life wouldn't be exciting if we did things the easy way would it? 9 hours later we arrive back in our Brussels apartment and it appears by all accounts we managed to bring the cold wet UK weather back home with us. We are thankful to be back, and thankful that we have the opportunity to stay in Europe for a while longer, as this has only shown us that there is so much more to see. We will never be able to see everything we would like to, but England, on the whole, a most enjoyable experience. And a welcome novelty to be surrounded by English for a change.

So although hubby didn't get a big 40th birthday extravaganza, he did get a wonderful week away and importantly re-affirming those old ties with his youth....It is amazing how a decade can be wiped away in a matter of time. He doesn't feel a day older than when I first met him xx

Switzerland, France and many many many more hours in the car....

Switzerland, France and many many many more hours in the car....

After our relaxing week in tuscany, we felt suitably recharged to start the looooonnnnggg journey back home.  This time I had planned a 3 day stopover in the Swiss alps.  The trip back from tuscany to Switzerland was not too unreasonable, a 6-7 hour car trip and this time we stopped for a break at one of the other picturesque italian lakes - Lake Maggiorri.  Just as stunning as Lake Como.

From there it was a quick trip through to the Valais region in the Swiss Alps. As we passed through the multiple italian toll booths, hubby took every opportunity to yell ARRIVEDERCI to the automated toll machines in a perfect italian accent, soon joined by a chorus of 3 girls. And soon it was goodbye Italy, hello Switzerland!

The road up to the small mountain village where we were staying was as could be expected- windy and mountainous. The GPS on this one occasion did not quite perform its job and took us up a crazy narrow pseudo-street which was apparently two way, but mostly gave me vertigo from worrying about falling off the side of the mountain.  We stayed in a lovely apartment nicknamed TinTin for its very tasteful comic book decor.

















The views from the windows were unparalleled. I am not particularly good with heights so looking down to the steep mountainous drop directly below was disconcerting...  One morning we looked out to see 4 or 5 young deer playing in one of the other chalets gardens. Priceless experience to see for the kids.
















   Switzerland, we soon discovered was not called the most expensive city in Europe for nothing.  The night we arrived, we went to the local ski field restaurant and re-evaluated how much we really "needed" to eat when we found a basic pizza had suddenly gone from 4 euro in Italy to 17 euro just across the border! Thinking that maybe the remote ski settlements were probably more pricey than the rest of the country, we were sadly mistaken and found prices extremely high everywhere we went in Switzerland. However, the upside of this was that the food was delicious. We had our best pizza and best risotto here, slightly ironic having just come from italy. The highlight was the local specialty - a strawberry risotto.  Admittedly, it looked less than delectable when it arrived, a kind of pale pink slop on a plate, but it was beautiful! Highly recommend trying it if you are ever there.

 The swiss also seemed to be a happier bunch. The country felt clean, green and thriving. There was a general air of order and calm. The swiss might also be a bit pedantic, I suspect. The steep wild grass edges of the road leading up the mountains, were mowed on a regular basis???!!! Who does this???

 I hadn't taken too much notice of the exact region that I had booked accommodation but was delighted that we were staying in the french speaking region rather than the german speaking.  We spent a couple of days exploring the local city of Sion, eating lovely food, and using the free local bikes (ok this was cheaper than italy).  Also parking was cheap, as with all of europe so far- 1-2 euro per hour downtown puts the $17-24/hour that downtown Brisbane charges to shame.

On our final day, we took a miniature train trip round the surrounding countryside. I was surprised to see that Switzerland was such a breadbasket. Acres of apricot, apple and pear orchards and cherry farms had us salivating in no time. The hills were lined with vineyards planted on precipitous slopes.  The train took us to a local organic farm which had an honesty box shop where we bought local organic apricots, raspberries, broccolli and apples. Delicious!

On our final day, we left bright and early but with the small problem of 2 out of 4 children vomiting... Luckily I had brought vomit buckets with us with lids (great tip from another travel website).  Our Google maps instructions (which I had printed out from start to finish) estimated a travel time of 7.5 hours.  Quite doable for the almost final leg.  We get in the car, turn on the GPS, put in the destination, and look at each other in horror- estimated travel time = 11 hours!!!  11 hours - how can this be?!! Especially with the possibility of much vomit along the way.... Hearts heavy, we set off, hoping that just this once, the GPS is wrong.  We make good progress until we come to the Swiss-French border, then things get a bit hairy. The GPS and my Google maps are trying to take us in opposite directions. We decide to follow Mr Google with the help of my European road map. Immediately 1 hour gets shaved off the GPS travel time- good choice! But we soon end up off the main roads and no longer have any route maps to refer to. Mr Google and GPS are still arguing between themselves and we are still attempting to follow the rather ambiguous Google instructions, until we come to a roundabout in the middle of nowhere and the road that Google wants to take us down has been closed off.  Google -0, GPS-1. We wander around a bit more in the wilderness until we stumble across signs pointing to McDonalds and eagerly follow the signs to this haven of wifi internet.  More directions were downloaded as we refueled and we set off again, this time with 3 sets of conflicting directions.  Finally we stumble upon the main autoroute and we get on with hightailing it up to Lille.   The rest of the 10 hour and 45 minutes journey was relatively uneventful, and the consumption of all those transfats, and additives appeared to have cured the upset tummies.  Our trip up the middle of france was probably less scenic than the trip down, or I may just have been more fatigued. One difference, we did not see any IKEAs on the journey home whereas there was an IKEA every few 100kms on the way down. We probably counted about 15! 

Arriving in Lille, we were meeting an old friend for dinner. We hastily found the apartment and the parking garage that I had booked, and promptly almost got stuck again as our car with the luggage pod was too high for the garage. A few scrapes and some lights almost taken out and we made it in.  We had a stunning apartment in Lille, a few steps down from the main centre and absolutely beautiful. The type of place I would absolutely book again.  The next day, we spent the day in Lille and found a free zoo and year-round carnival which had inexpensive rides and the kids had a ball.

 The measly 1 hour trip home from Lille felt like a walk in the park and it was nice to finely get home and our own beds.

And that, my dear friends, was our summer adventure.

Things I learnt:
1) the GPS is always right, except when it is wrong, but you won't know this till it's too late. It is best not to abuse it though... You may need it when Google and route maps have left you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
2) my kids have now been broken in to car trips- we could drive from one side of Belgium to the other and back again without a single complaint. (Ok I admit, Belgium is a rather small country really, but seriously , the chorus of "I'm booorrrreeed used to start after about 20 minutes).
3) Take containers with lids for car trips.
4) Italy may be my favourite, or maybe it is Switzerland now. I can't decide. But Paris still holds my heart...