Saturday, June 23, 2007

Day 4 - Antwerp

I over slept (could be from the sleep deprivation as last night was the first almost full night of sleep that I have gotten so far). Today was also my first experience at driving in Europe (Kevin drove yesterday). When I left the hotel I didn't allow the GPS to find itself before I started driving. I ended up going in circles for about 30 minutes. It took a while for me to figure out how to interpret what the GPS was saying, as in the city the verbal commands are a little late (and I was in full traffic). At one point I turned the wrong way on to a 1 lane, one way street. The driver I ended up "face to face" with was very nice, he pointed out that I was going the wrong way (I don't think he even honked), then he waited for me to do a 3 point turn and get headed the right way. Not much later I ended up in the "Tram/Bus" lane. As I was at the light (the tram light) a car turned in front of me. He smirked and shook his finger at me and pointed to the right lane. I finally made it to the right street (which took me back in front of my hotel and straight to the highway). Once on the highway it took me about 3o minutes to get to Laakdal. When I got off of the highway in laakdal I again took a wrong turn...the GPS said turn right, but I thought it was a driveway....when it recalculated it put me on some very rural roads... I finally made it to the office. What an adventure. The drive back to the hotel was much easier.

While I was at work Kevin wondered the city. He got lost while walking and then went for a run and got lost again. His Nike+ said he went 9 miles on his run. He was really lost. He had fun though, he walked all over Antwerp and saw the outside of many things. He also made it to the cathedral in Antwerp. He says it was so nice that it almost made him wish he was still Catholic. He had the infamous "belgian waffle" but no frituer (he was waiting for me). We met at the hotel at 6:30pm. We headed back towards the cathedral for dinner. After dinner we took the tram back to the hotel. We found the right train, just going the wrong way..there were only 3 stops before it hit the end of the line and did a u-turn, now we were headed the right way.

If you can't tell, we are going to spend a lot of time lost on this trip, but that is part of the fun :)

1 comment:

MichelleMarie said...

Wouldn't be the first time you ended up the wrong way down a one-way street Dana. I am glad it worked out and the guy was nice to you...and I wasn't in the car this time to scream. LOL.