Europe Summer, 2024, last day…day 13

We were up a little early this morning, which is probably best since tomorrow our first flight of two to come home is at 6am. To the airport by 4am. Fortunately, we are staying at the Brussels Airport Sheraton (I have status here thanks to a credit card perk.) Breakfast, included at the hotel here starts at 6am, about when we’ll be taking off…🤦

Kitty #2 came in for a visit. She sits at the window until I open it.

We ate breakfast and said our goodbyes to our wonderful hosts who arranged for a taxi to the train station for us at 1pm and offered to store our bags for us, too. There’s also a little bathroom off the hall that we can use if needed. Very nice.

We headed across to St. James Church.

I’m glad we stopped in. It was an interesting church.

Mike gave me the church giggles so we had to leave, (“excuse me, sir…SIR!”) but not before taking a white ribbon that the church was offering as a sign for a desire of world peace.

We still had three stops on our “top 5 chocolate shops of Bruges” tour leftover from day 1 so that was the rest of our morning.

All of the chocolates we had were good but I. Don’t think my palette is so refined that I can really tell much difference between a super high quality and a decent quality chocolate.

We made better time that we thought we would since the chocolate shops were grouped pretty close together. We ended up standing in front of the Torture Museum and looking at our watches seeing that we had about an hour and 1/2 to kill so…in we went.

I went to a torture museum in Germany back in 2012 and it had many authentic and disturbing torture devices. This one, on the other hand, had lots of replicas with very cheesy mannequins. It was…a way to kill 45 minutes. Or to at least torture 45 minutes.

The gift shop was interesting…

We sat in the square watching the world go by for a bit then headed back to the B&B to catch our taxi. Good bye Bruges!

A couple of hours later we were all checked in to the Sheraton in Brussels. I took a quick nap and then we had a late lunch/early dinner at the hotel.

Time for bed so we can get up at 3am to prep for our flight…

The next morning…

We were up before our alarms went off and got ready for the flight. Other than struggling to exit our hotel (all of the doors were locked…Mike Hulked a red button off the wall in frustration…) and a long passport line in Lisbon, we made it to our final flight home.

The flight was pretty bumpy at times but we made it safely to SFO. We just have to grab our bags and our rental to make the drive home. It’s Friday so I’m guessing it will take us 3-4 hours to make it home. Stupid Bay Area Friday traffic.

Well, this was one hell of a trip. Zürich and Freitag, Zermatt and the Matterhorn, the silly Leaning Tower in Pisa, and lovely Lucca, amazing Vernazza in the Cinque Terre. And of course Bruges. Plus the joy of spending quality time with my husband who made me laugh multiple times a day everyday. What a gift.

Thanks again for following along. Goodbye until the next trip…