We slept in a bit the next morning and then went to brunch at Peck 47.  It was so fun!  Service was SLOW but we weren’t in a hurry.  We all chose different flavors of fresh squeezed juice and Carlie, Nat and I got all 3 kinds of savory waffles with poached eggs on top.  They were delicious! Today was a super hot day. On our way to the Musical Instrument museum we found a fountain and let the girls splash around for a bit. We also enjoyed the beautiful Mont des Arts area. And how cool is that bike arch???The Museum was really fun! And it was housed in such a unique building.  It was an old bank. Both Halle and Gwen were fascinated by all the funny and unique instruments we saw.  Halle found a case of clarinets and told Gwen, “These are my best friends.”  Gwen looked at her like she was crazy, and then shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Ok. That’s weird, but ok.”After the museum we wanted to go back to the palace to see the archeological ruins.  It happened that we stumbled on a fun family day.  There were lots of activities and the girls got to walk on stilts, shoot nerf crossbows, make an ink print, and our favorite activity of all—Dress up time!Nat legit thought this guy wasn’t wearing pants and we were laughing so much the whole time he was telling his story.  In Flemmish.  They only had one Queen and one girl costume and one King and one boy.  Carlie asked if she could wear the King costume while Natalie wore the Queen.  The ladies who were running the station said, “This is a highly unusual request!  Normally we don’t allow women to wear the King’s costume. That’s so Modern!”  The said they could made an exception just this once, and they got such a charge out of it. One of the ladies snapped Carlie’s picture and said, “I can’t wait to show this to some of the men we work with.  They will be so shocked.”  It was the best part of the day.  None of us could stop giggling. We put Nat up on a stool so she towered over Carlie.  We called Carlie “Lord Farquad.”  We had two more chocolate shops on our list to try before e went to the airport.  Neuhaus was first.  We walked in and asked e man behind the counter what he would recommend we try. He turned up his nose and said, “I really can’t recommend anything.  I don’t eat chocolate.” So I asked him what the best sellers were. He again turned up his nose and said, “It completely depends on what you like.  I really can’t recommend anything to you.”  Ummm…ok. We bought a few things and they were DELICIOUS.  But we decided we didn’t want to spend our money in his rude shop so we walked down the street to a different location and purchase many treats to take home with us.

Last chocolate shop was Corne Port-Royal.  Pretty sure this one was my favorite. It was incredible.  I had a hard time stopping after a few pieces.  I’d come back here in a heartbeat! One more stop at Elizabeth to pick up Mallow Cakes to take home.  It was right by Manneken Pi’s and he was wearing a costume today.  We were so glad we got to see him dressed up.  And could his costume be a more perfect representation of our day?  King costume and a crossbow.  Our time was running out so we booked it back to Fritland as fast as we could for one last Mitriallette.  It was a perfect way to end our decadent Belgium eating experience.We had checked into our flights to Berlin the night before on the train on the way home fromGhent. The service was spotty and slow.  I was able to get Nat, Halle and I checked in, but couldn’t see the details.  So I just asked Carlie what time the flight was because we had all booked the same.  She told me 8:20.  Well, as we were walking back to the apartment to grab our luggage a notification pops up on my phone that said our flight was boarding.  WHATTT???  I had booked us the wrong time!  I have no idea how it happened. From there it was a comedy of errors. We got to the airport and the flight was delayed.  Maybe we could make it!  Nope—doors were closing. Had we been there 5 min before……

Then Carlie’s flight was overbooked so they couldn’t get us on that one.  But, Carlie could volunteer to be bumped and they’d give her a hotel room for the night and 250 Euros. Happy day!  That would be very helpful because we bought non refundable tickets and were looking at having to purchase all new flights to and from Berlin. Nope again. Another plane was late so connecting passengers missed the flight and they didn’t need to bump Carlie after all.

Before the trip Natalie had been feeling a little anxious about all the travel wand navigating without Michael.  Michael had told her, “Don’t worry.  All you have to do is get to Denver and then Tara will take care of you from there.”  I failed my big sister duties!

Right during the most stressful time Gwen said, “I really wish I had a cucumber right now.” Apparently cucumbers solve problems 🙂

We bit the bullet and booked new tickets to leave the next morning at 6:20 am and found the cheapest hotel ever.  3 single beds.  We got a few hours of sleep and were back at the airport by 5am.  I’m pretty proud of how we handled this. It could have turned into s bickering, snapping disaster but we all kept our cool and rolled with the punches. Finally, on to Berlin!