For those tracking us, we made it safe and sound and have checked into the hotel (about 5 hours ago). Now that I have that out of the way...
We are currently in the Netherlands by way of Detroit to Chicago to Brussels, Belgium. Yeah, I know, we're kinda freaking out about it also. Plane left Detroit at 10:10AM and we arrived at 9:20AM in Brussels...the next day. Good times. Ford sent me to Lommel, Beligium for 2 weeks to do some training and I dragged J and Tay with me. We will be in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and also France during our 2.5 week visit.
Flights were actually very uneventful - Detroit to Chicago was no problem - we were able sit together and since the flight was barely over an hour it felt as if we were landing as soon as we took off. We had a 7 hour layover in Chicago - no problem right? We love the city. Problem was that when we landed, it was pouring rain. Not the best time to be walking around the city. So, we got some lunch and then hung out at the airport - playing uno, reading, etc. As tired as we were, we didn't sleep because we knew we needed to be tired to sleep on the plane.
We sure were excited when it was close enough to boarding time to go and stand at the gate. While we were standing there, one of the flight attendants (Mr. Gonzalez) came by and started talking to Taylor (this is important later). It took a while, but we finally boarded. We were able to sit together again which was nice. J and Tay had a good conversation with the woman sitting next to Tay, and it turns out the man next to me is from Lommel (the city I will be working in this week). It was a nice flight - we were served drinks, dinner, drinks, and breakfast. We were all able to get some sleep after dinner which was great. Since it was such a long flight, we were given pillow, blankets and had movies playing. Not bad. Plane left at 6PM Saturday and we arrived 9:20AM Sunday...gotta love the 7 hour time difference from Chicago.
The interesting part of the flight is that Mr. Gonzalez decided to take care of Taylor and named her his 'special buddy' (and announced this to any of the flight attendants walking by). What this meant for Taylor was while we were waiting to take off, he brought her a banana and bag of chips to tide her over. Then, she got wings from one of the other flight attendants. Then, he brought her ice cream after dinner. She also got the first class breakfast ahead of everyone else in economy - fresh fruit and a croissant. He definitely took care of her and made her feel special. It was a nice treat.
We then figured out how to get the rental car, navigate the roads from Brussels, Belgium to Eindhoven, Netherlands (thank goodness for the GPS in the car), and found the hotel. We checked in, tried to find some lunch (everything is closed including the restaurant in the hotel - it is Sunday after all). After getting some food at the Shell gas station, we watched a movie (which means I took a nap while a movie was playing) and have been hanging out. We are about to venture out and try to find dinner before retiring for the night.
I have a few other pictures and will try to load them later - having some technical difficulty at the moment...
I'll be keeping this updated with status of our trip...
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