Saturday, November 17, 2018

Belgium- Part 1

Seth had a race at Spa (in Belgium) on October 13th. I flew out with Andrea (her husband was racing too) on October 11th. Cheers to a fun trip ahead!
 We arrived in Brussels Friday morning, rented a car, and drove two hours to Spa. I was pretty proud of us for navigating all of that in a foreign country! 
This was a our cute AirBnB. It used to be a small hotel with a restaurant. It had 8 rooms (we used up 5 of them with our group). I'll post more pictures at the end of this post. It was quite an interesting place to stay! 
After quick showers, we explored a little with Seth's parents and another racer's wife (Crystal). This is the charming town of Spa. We grabbed some lunch at a sandwich shop.
 If you take the funicular to the top, there really is a spa up there (The Thermes of Spa). In looking at their website, it would be AMAZING. Next time, next time....

After this, we drove around for a little while and then went to see the track. 
 Saturday day was race day! It was a 12 hour race (9 a.m to 9 p.m). Here's the whole gang!

 And here I am with my hubby! Go, # 151! 




We did have amazing weather! It was truly perfect fall weather. When Seth came to this race last year, during the same time it was rainy and cold. 
 This day was Andrea's 40th birthday!! Woo hoo! 
We came back to our hotel for lunch and break from the 12 hour race. We sat outside in the sunshine. This HUGE (empty) wine bottle was in one of the rooms so we were just being silly with it. 
We headed back to the track later that afternoon to watch the rest of the race. Night time driver change!

Seth's car (3 drivers- Dan, Chris, and Seth) finished 2nd!

https://www.facebook.com/crystal.d.rogers.5/videos/10156881082587652/UzpfSTYyNzAxNTgwMDoxMDE1NjUwMzc5MTk0MDgwMQ/

 Here is the video of the awards. Love the champagne spray (Chris didn't want to get his trophy wet, but Seth wasn't going to let that happen, lol)

Below are pictures of the random place we stayed 
 Our room (not pictured: our carpeted bathroom with a bathtub (no shower) 
 Uneven, narrow stairway

JB at the bar 

Behind the bar (nothing in the taps)


 Front room - ping pong, air hockey (not that we had time for any of this)
commercial kitchen 
 Eating area
 sauna 
pool
 pretty lake across the street

We had all of this for 4 couples and a single guy (plus some of Bobby and Brenda's friend's sons came and stayed one night since we had the room). It was reasonably priced (separate hotel rooms would have been more expensive). Crazy!