That only means we went there. We have met no insurmountable objects as of yet. We have not turned back on our attempt to have a relationship or to be the royalty of half of Europe. In fact, the car will help our attempts to conquer Europe...via tires hitting the pavement and our tent from Target.

We started the day a bit later than we had hoped, but finally we were headed to Waterloo. (due to time change we lost a beloved hour) It was so late, actually, that everything was shutting down. Eva had decided while we were dressing for the day that she was going to wear her favorite sporty-pants. I always beg her not to wear them (not because I don't want her to be super comfy) because it makes her look like she's wearing pajamas. I didn't care today really, but when she got out of the car in Waterloo and added her gigantic (mine) long-sleeve t-shirt to the ensemble because she was cold, well she succeeded on embarrassing herself. "I'm wearing pajamas" she said. :)

We started off toward the Lion and en-route, we stopped at Quick (which was slow, so slow in fact they had us pull out of the drive-through/drive-wait and had us wait in an area of the parking-lot) Someone recently told me that the slow-time of Quick was actually better because that meant that they weren't cooking ahead of time and as a result, this was saving on food waste. Maybe. But to hyper-cook (microwave) a hamburger shouldn't take 15 minutes! And fries? Well fries are always frying! I think it was my veggie-burger.

We made it to the Lion and ate our Quick in its shadow. Since we don't really know anything about what happened at Waterloo outside of the song from ABBA, we figured we should do some research and then revisit. Then it will not only mean more, but we'll get more out of it.

Oh, by the way, the further south one gets out of Flanders, the more beautiful it seems. One has to love rolling hills after living on a pancake for the past year and a half. (Though I find the flatness of Belgium and the Netherlands particularly striking as well.)

We wound our way around just-south-of-Brussels and switched from French to Dutch at least half a dozen times. Wekom..., Beinevue...back and forth. We ended up in Halle which was having a carnival. The pajamaed Eva and my regularly dressed self headed into town for a bit of the festivities. She primarily wanted to show me a shop that only sold statues of Mary (no longer there) their cathedral (under renovation) and the city (alive with drunken and Halloween-dressed people) We bought some smulterbollen (funnel-cake balls) and headed back to the car. Once the town returns to normal we'll return when we gain enough knowledge to return to Waterloo. Besides it was getting a bit chilly for Eva and her cotton track pants!

We snaked back into Antwerpen, struggled to find a parking place and only realized later on that we thought we should move it due to construction signs. Our street currently has about a dozen such signs which means the "don't park from here to there" gets very confusing. I actually re-parked it 4 times. Now it's in a great location only a 4 minute walk from here on a one-way street without signs.

As we troubled over what to eat for dinner, Leila called and offered us their left-over Chinese. It's from the same Chinese place where we usually order the family pack, only this was highly-chosen food due to the fact that Susan and Leila are apparently going to start a diet tomorrow. Tonight they each ordered their very favorite things in an effort to start the diet off with a good last meal. (nice idea!) Their giving us leftovers makes it harder for me to start my much-needed weight-loss plan, of course, but I dealt with it quite nicely.

IN THE NEWS:
A Palestinian suicide bomber wounded 30 people outside a packed cafe in northern Israel on Sunday, an attack the Islamic Jihad called "Palestine's gift to the heroic people of Iraq." The blast raised Israeli fears of more bombings as the war in Iraq intensifies.