An interesting day in Antwerp today. Yesterday I hired a car for some exploring, we made it back to Di's just fine. Today we set out for Brussels after visiting a friend just out of Antwerp and picking up the small one from school. We used Kiwi Ben, the original Cardiff Kate Sarah and I bought to negotiate Wales with a sex change. I'm not sure Kate wanted to be a boy, especially one who says, "chuck a U'ey and lets have a pie" when I've made a wrong turn.
Slightly irritating when the wrong turn was caused by a slow kiwi lad. Kiwi Ben takes his time to make decisions and communicates them just before the turn, the lane change, the exit. Not helpful when there's traffic and sudden lane changes are not quite possible. So a journey of a few kilometres becomes one of a many kilometres and much frustration. Being time bound did not help that much, schools don't wait for lost picker uppers.
We kept our calm, mostly, and managed to negotiate the tram lines, one way streets, roundabouts, ring roads, country lanes, road works, bikes and pedestrians without too much carnage and bad language all while driving on the other side of the road. A baptism of fire to driving in Europe, there's a first time for everything. The day ended well, tomorrow it's more of the same with a trip to Namur planned and a visit to another friend.
This is such good practice for our trip across the top of Italy, into Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary. That's next weeks adventure. Today a new satnav was purchased for that trip, I suspect that's a wise choice, I'm not sure my blunt map method would work so well on that journey.
I think I'd rather travel this way, although the water was way too cold for a swim.
Slightly irritating when the wrong turn was caused by a slow kiwi lad. Kiwi Ben takes his time to make decisions and communicates them just before the turn, the lane change, the exit. Not helpful when there's traffic and sudden lane changes are not quite possible. So a journey of a few kilometres becomes one of a many kilometres and much frustration. Being time bound did not help that much, schools don't wait for lost picker uppers.
We kept our calm, mostly, and managed to negotiate the tram lines, one way streets, roundabouts, ring roads, country lanes, road works, bikes and pedestrians without too much carnage and bad language all while driving on the other side of the road. A baptism of fire to driving in Europe, there's a first time for everything. The day ended well, tomorrow it's more of the same with a trip to Namur planned and a visit to another friend.
This is such good practice for our trip across the top of Italy, into Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary. That's next weeks adventure. Today a new satnav was purchased for that trip, I suspect that's a wise choice, I'm not sure my blunt map method would work so well on that journey.
I think I'd rather travel this way, although the water was way too cold for a swim.
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| Parking Cascais, Portugal |
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| Cascais, nice day for a swim |
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