Scuba Steve's 60th Bday bash!

The best week of our whole time in Belgium - the week my family and my friend Mark got to visit for my Dad's 60th birthday!  That's probably why it's taken me so long to catch up with this blog, I want to make sure I did it justice.

My dad and Mark arrived a day earlier than everyone else, so I got to party with the boys for one night before my Mom, Lisa and Chris arrived.  We started our day by going to Beer Mania - this huge beer store in Brussels, where you can buy any type of Belgian beer, the glass that goes with it, and they will ship stuff back to the States for you.  We got to try a few beers too, which was really great.

We then headed down to the Fish Market area by St. Catherine and grabbed dinner at a great seafood restaurant.  Everyone got some sort of lobster, it didn't touch the lobster from the Northeast, but they did prepare it really well and it was a great dinner!  That night the boys then headed out to the Cigar bar and I headed back to get some much needed rest before the rest of the family arrived.

Sunday morning the rest of my family arrived and it was time for a big nap before we started Dad's 60th birthday celebrations!  We started off with some appetizers and champagne at the apartment and opened Dad's birthday presents.  We then headed over to Restobieres for his birthday dinner.  This was our second time at Restobieres and it didn't disappoint.  I had reserved a big table for us all and the owner and chef was very helpful the entire night, helping with a beer tasting with each course and giving us a lot of info on the beers.  Dinner was awesome, by the time we were done we had all had quite a few beer tastings, but of course we had to finish the night at Delirium.  My dad had an amazing time and I think we gave him the best 60th bday celebration ever.

The next day I got the day off from work and we all took a day trip into Antwerp.  We did the walking tour that our guidebook recommended, did some sightseeing and of course some barhopping.  Unfortunatley my Dad had to leave to go back to a work conference in the US, but everyone else stayed until the end of the week.

Tuesday through Thursday, I unfortunately still had to work, but my family got to travel to some cool places.  Tuesday they went to Bruge..

 Wednesday they took a break and stayed in Brussels.  They got to see the neighborhood market with Jay and picked up rabbit, yup, rabbit for the boys to make for dinner, they did an amazing job.

On Thursday they went to Paris ...

On Friday we all got to go to Ghent - my favorite Belgian city.  This was the second time going with my Mom to Ghent (we had gone when they visited the first time) and we had missed the castle the first time.  We of course slept in and busted our butts to get to the castle before it closed!  We then headed by the water and did some pub crawling, we even found a "shot bar" where you could try tons of different types of homemade shots.  We finished the night sitting by the water and enjoying a lovely dinner outside.  Unfortunately this was Mark's last night, he had to fly out early the next morning to head back home.

On our final day we hung out in Brussels and stopped at our favorite wine bar and then had an amazing final dinner at a great Italian/French restaurant, Le Troisiemi Acte (The Third Act).

We had so much fun with my family and Mark's visit - it was so hard to see them go!  But we knew that we'd be seeing them all again very soon as this was nearing the end of our Belgian assignment.

I then had one last week of work, so Jay and I tried to make the most out of our last week in Belgium dooing some more sightseeing before we left for Portugal for vacation!  We finally had time to tour the Cantillon Brewery in Brussels - definitely unique - but I still really didn't like the gueze! http://www.cantillon.be/br/3_1

 More to come on our vacation to Portugal!  It was absolutely amazing - and that will be my FINAL post of our Europe trip!  Thanks for reading!