It's been real Belgium!

 Well the day after bungee jumping was not nearly as thrilling, but it was another day for the record books. We woke up in Switzerland, drove to the French border before stopping for lunch, ate dinner in Germany, and then spent the night in Luxembourg. It was a lot of driving on the bus which normally I don’t mind but since bungee jumping reminded me of the snowboarding accident from last winter so I couldn’t sit still for long without some ibuprofen. For my second time in Germany I was again a little disappointed. Maybe we need to get better at picking our destination cities because we haven’t hit any tourist towns. I guess I’ll have to go back to visit there another time. Dinner however was excellent. We ate at a family owned winery where we sampled 6 different wines that one of the owners told us about. After dinner we headed back to Luxembourg where out hotel was literally surrounded by fields and horses so needless to say we stayed in for the night. I decided to repack my suitcase in hopes that I wouldn’t have to do it again and I would be under the 50 pound limit.

Wednesday morning we had a tasty breakfast at the hotel. Mostly just bread but it was good so it’s okay. We left the hotel to do a tour of the city of Luxembourg where more of the European Union activity happens. The first part was on the bus and we were so happy because it is quite cold here now, and walking around for hours is not as fun. The last part was a walking tour through the older part of the city where we saw how it was originally built as one of the most fortified cities in Europe with its natural hills and Roman-built walls. We had a break for lunch and souvenir shopping and then we bussed to Brussels for our last dinner as a group. We went to a restaurant called The Mother Mill where we had one of the long European meals- you wait at least 30 minutes between courses and get hardly anything to drink. But it was so nice to be with everyone one last time, hard to believe that was the end! We came back to our hotel in Brussels where Dr. Wright said his final goodbyes because we are officially on our own. Seven of us are flying out at 8:30 tomorrow morning for a day in Amsterdam followed by 2 days in Rome before returning to Brussels. This is my last entry until Brussels on Sunday or Chicago on Sunday afternoon with the final entry about Rome!