May Day Weekend

Disclaimer - Joe has not proof read this so there will be grammar mistakes...it usually takes him a couple weeks to check the blog then correct all my mistakes.

In Europe May Day is “Labor Day” This year it was on a Thursday and it was a long weekend for us.

Originally we were going to France with some other couples so the men could go mountain biking. Joe did a number on his knee and hasn’t been able to ride for weeks and cancelled the trip for us.

Here is a recap of our weekend.

Thursday:

We went to see The Star Wars Exhibit – it was fun to see some of the costumes of the characters. However some of it was lost on Joe not seeing the movies…like he didn’t know what a Ewok was. Later that day we went to see the new movie “Iron Man” with Robert Downey Jr. It was good.

Friday:
We started out for Bastogne, along the way we stopped at Namur to find a “Troc” store. Troc stores are consignment stores in Europe that we have found some great stuff in. The only problem was we didn’t have the address, so we stopped at a gas station and asked for a phone book to find the address…Yes I did that all in French, and he even know what I was taking about.

When we were leaving Troc, I asked for a list of the other Troc’s and he gave me a pamphlet with all of the Belgium stores. Again all in French and he know what I wanted.

As we drove down the highway Joe would say towns that were coming up to and I would check the list to see if they had a Troc. The next one was in Ciney. However it was closed so we just had lunch in the cute little town.

Bastogne – this town is where in WWII the Americans held the Germans off for weeks then finally the Germans retreated. The battle days were in late December over Christmas in the cold and deep snow. Over 80,000 Americans lost their lives defending this little Belgian town, against several large German divisions.

The Historical Center – is a small museum with authentic artifacts from the war and a big memorial to the US soldiers who fought there.

The memorial has names of the states all around it.

Then we visited a exhibition called J’avais 20 ans en ’45 or I was 20 years old in 1945. It was a good exhibit and through out there were TV’s with people telling there tales of the war. The one story that I remember was a lady say she took shelter from the bombing in the woods for 2 days. She stayed in a snow bank and froze the bottom half of her body and had her little baby with her.

I can’t even imagine staying outside in the snow for 2 days with a baby.

Foxy standing by an memorial.

Saturday:
We headed to Antwerp to look for a dress at Diane Von Furstenberg for my b-day but no luck.

We then headed to the Troc in Antwerp…and found 2 paintings by Emily Lammers. Remember she is the artist of our flower painting.

The paintings look good in the photo but the one of Bruge, Belgium the sky is flaking off and we need to see if we can restore it or maybe put glass over it so it doesn’t flake more.



The painting above is of Brugge.

Typical winter in Beligum - grey skies.

Also they had an 1962 Mercedes for 11,500 euros. It was robin egg blue with red leather seats. I think I could like having an old car like that.

And just like that our weekend is done and today (Sunday) Joe headed back to Minnesota and Foxy and enjoyed 2 walks in the warm sunshine. I was wearing a t-shirt for one of them that are how nice it was here today.

OHHH by the way the camera got dropped on Thursday and is not closing correctly so Joe is bringing it to get fixed…our Venice trip is coming up and I hope his camera has enough disk space for that trip; we have never just used his camera for a trip.