....well, the renovations are still not finished!
Last week we had 4 days in Brussels...here's what happened:
Monday : Anyone who knows me will know that I don't do "last minute" when it comes to traveling. I like to allow plenty of time to get to the airport. So with that in mind, we (I) decided that we needed to leave the house at 8.30am for a 12.30pm flight from Kristiansand to Amsterdam. (journey time to airport under 2 hours). We were all ready to drive off at 8.45am, except we had to lock our door. Our neighbour had one key (to feed the cats), MIL had another to come in and do some decorating for us & the remaining key was attached to the car key, in the ignition. So, Nils switched off the engine to lock the door. Got back in, turned the ignition and NOTHING! The car completely died. The electrics seemed okay, so Nils went to fetch the keys for our other car and started it up. He attached jump leads and still nothing. Prognosis - looks like the starter motor has gone!
We then had no choice but to load up the other car, which is a 3 door, Oskar's car seat doesn't fit and de-ice in minus 16 degrees. To solve the problem of the child seat, we had to resort to getting Oskar's old seat out. Luckily, he was still within the weight limit for the seat, but a tad too long. However, we had no choice.....by the time we left home, it was 9.45am!
We arrived at the airport at 11.35am. We were relieved that, as this is a small airport, we were still allowed to check-in......what a relief! We made our flight! As a major plus, we were moved from our original seats, so that we had 3 seats in total - what luxury, when you have a Oskar on your lap!
The rest of the journey went smoothly. Oskar loved all the Christmas lights at Schipol Airport as well as the giraffe highchair in the food court. The flight from Amsterdam to Brussels took 30 minutes and on arrival, we hopped onto a bus, which dropped us off about a minutes walk from the hotel.
Oskar loved the room we had - all light switches at his level and a great corner window he could look out and watch the passing traffic!
Tuesday : I slept very badly, so woke up feeling dreadful. Nils' meeting wasn't scheduled until later in the day, so we had a relaxed breakfast, before heading our separate ways. Nils to his meeting in Auderghem, and Oskar and I to the centre of town. We were lead to believe that the walk from the hotel to The Grand Place was approx 20-30 minutes! Wrong! It takes 1 hour, as the tourist signs take you in a direction that a person with buggy can't go - down flights of steps! The more I walked, the more wound-up I became...I was also looking for a shop/supermarket so that I could buy a bottle of water for Oskar. The pavements were either blocked or uneven...I was zigzagging all the time, couldn't find a shop that was accessible......in the end I had a panic attack. At the point, I wished the pavement could have swallowed me up, but in reality, that's not practical with a 17 month old
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