Unlike most of our trips, this one had been generally planned for months, as it was to attend my cousin Rachel’s wedding!  The original plan was to fly down Monday for a Tuesday wedding, but with Monday and even Sunday flights getting tight, Saturday seemed to be our best bet.  The five of us headed to Fort Myers via Charlotte on American Airlines.  We got seats either together or very close to each other on both flights, and the girls did better than they have on any of our other trips.  It’s slowly and surely getting easier!  It was nice to sit next to the oldest on one flight, and talk to her the whole way, and to have the youngest nap with her head on my leg on the other flight.

Upon arriving, I got a minivan from Advantage Rental Car, which was unfortunately offsite from the airport, and it took over an hour from the time I left the airport to the time I got back to the curbside to pick up the girls.  Once we got car seats, girls, and bags loaded, we headed to World of Beer, where we ate quickly, as my mom was flying in a couple of hours after us via Atlanta.  Upon picking her up, we headed to the Holiday Inn Fort Myers Airport, which seemed to be very new.  I used IHG points for the one night stay.  We were ready for bed by the time we got to the room, and I fell asleep quickly.  In the morning, I got a good workout in down in the fitness center, we got everyone up and dressed, and headed down to breakfast.  I didn’t at first realize that the breakfast buffet wasn’t complimentary, but quickly resolved that with the front desk with some friendly banter and a nice smile, and quickly had vouchers for the whole gang in hand.  It pays to be friendly!  After breakfast, we had to check out the back patio and pool before packing up.  I made the trip back to the off-site rental car company, then to the terminal, where I pick up the van we’d use for the rest of the week.  After heading back to the hotel to pick up everyone and our luggage, we were off.

After a couple quick stops for crowlers from local breweries, we made our way across the causeway and onto Sanibel Island.  We had a one bedroom suite with a pullout couch for the first night, and would move rooms to a larger space for the next two nights.  We took the girls over to the pool at the condo, and the older two loved going down the small slide into my arms in the pool.  It helped to wear them out, as they went to bed fairly easily!

The next morning, the three early risers – myself, the oldest daughter, and my mom, got our swimsuits on and headed out to the beach.  We walked along the shore for a while, picking up seashells as we went.  The sunrise was one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen.  There were a couple of women who volunteered for a seashell museum on the island, walking the beach and educating people on the many types of shells and where and when best to find them.  When the bike rental counter at the resort opened at 8am, I rented a bike and rode on bike trails all the way to Captiva Island and back, about a 22 mile round trip.  The ride there was with the wind and speedy, but the return was quite the opposite, and I was pretty zonked by the time I got back!

We then got all of our belongings packed up and checked out of that room, and headed to my aunt Chris’ house to relax for the afternoon.  She had quite the spread of food to snack on while we caught up with relatives, some we’d met, and some we were meeting for the first time.  The girls spent hours in the pool.  That evening, I made quesadillas and plantains for dinner, and took the middle daughter out for a beach walk, as she was the only one who still had the energy.  After dropping her back off at the room, I headed to the lobby to check on something, where I ran into my cousin Dan (Rachel’s brother), his fiancé, and his cousin and friend.  We had good conversation there, and stopped by another local joint for a couple local brews.

The next morning, the whole gang headed out to the beach.  The youngest girls stayed and played in the sand, while the oldest, my mom and I walked around in the water looking for large shells on a sandbar a little ways out.  We had quite a bit of luck finding some large and very ornate shells.  It was all fun and games until I bent down to get a large shell out of the water, at which point a large wave swept over me, knocking my glasses off my face.  The water was murky, so there wasn’t much point trying to feel around for them for more than a few minutes.  A woman who was also searching for shells adjacent to us was sure they’d wash up, but with the wedding about 6 hours away, I wasn’t counting on it.  Laura, myself, and the two youngest girls high-tailed it back over to Fort Myers, where I ordered a new pair of glasses, which wouldn’t be ready until the next day (unless I wanted to forgo transition lenses, which I didn’t).  We made a quick stop at a Chinese restaurant for food to hold us over until the wedding (I got dim sum for myself!), and got to the condo just in time to eat and get everyone bathed and ready for the wedding.  I made a quick stop to the front desk to see if my glasses may have turned up, with no luck.

The wedding on the beach on Captiva Island was beautiful.  The weather and timing of the sunset were perfect, and it was just how I like weddings: short, to the point, but also very meaningful.  Everything came together perfectly.  I was very happy to see my cousin get married to the love of her life!  The reception was in a local restaurant on Captiva Island, in a room perfect for the group of about 40 or so of us.  There was a live band, which the girls loved dancing with relatives to, and I got a nice big bowl of local seafood to fill that craving I’d been having.  We stayed for a while, but between the girls getting sleepy, and my getting a headache from not having glasses and everything being blurry, we left a bit earlier than I would have liked.  But, we were happy to have been there.  As expected, all three girls fell asleep in the van on the way back to the condo.

 

Once we got up, we fairly quickly got packed and finished up all the leftover food in the refrigerator for lunch.  I checked us out of the condo at the front desk, and hopped in the passenger seat so Laura could drive my blind self and the rest of us back to Fort Myers to the airport to head home.  As luck would have it, the same young woman who I’d asked about my glasses the day before was working the front desk and checked me out.  And also as luck would have it, she remembered that I was the one missing glasses.  About 15 minutes into our drive toward the airport, she called and said that a guest had turned in a pair of glasses that had washed up on the shore.  She described my glasses perfectly.  So we quickly turned around, picked them up, gave her a nice tip for her good memory, called the eyeglass store to tell them to ship my new glasses, and headed back toward the airport.  Now I have a spare pair!

Dropping the car off and flying to Charlotte was uneventful, and we lucked out and just barely made it on a flight home together.  It was a fairly quick trip, but just long enough to get plenty of time to relax, let the girls enjoy the beach, which the love.  We also had a good time with my mom’s side of the family, several of which live on Sanibel now, and who we don’t often see anymore.  And of course, it’s always a privilege to witness the wedding of those you love.  All in all, another good trip!

 

This is an installment of Bryant Backyard Border Bouncing (BBBB).  For more information, please see the bottom of the About page.

 

The third installment of BBBB covered a country much closer to the United States than Korea and Brazil (the first two installments) – Jamaica!  Again, we weren’t able to spend as much time on this one as we would like, but we had a good time learning about the island nation in the Caribbean.

We didn’t dig-in to facts on Jamaica as much as we have previously, but did explore a few aspects by way of the cuisine and what Jamaica is well known for in popular culture.  We started out by visiting Jamaica Jerk on the northwest side of the city, just a mile or so away from the office that Matt used to work out of.  It was a fairly frequent lunch destination from the time it opened.

As often happens, we ordered a variety of food, which the girls mostly picked at, and Matt ended up eating the majority of.  One day they’ll get more into it, I’m sure!  Matt’s favorite is oxtail.  The meat is so flavorful, and so tender and juicy that it falls right off the bone.  And of course the country and restaurant are both known for Jerk Chicken, so we got a nice sized order of that also.  Both came with rice and beans, cabbage, and plantains (another of Matt’s favorites).  The restaurant also had several beverages from Jamaica, so we picked up a can of coconut water, and bottles of pineapple and grapefruit soda.  Dad loved the coconut water, and the girls went to town on the soda.  As always, the owners were extremely friendly and hospitable.  One of the best restaurants in town, if you ask me.  We were the only ones eating in, but there was a constant stream of to-go orders headed out the door.

That evening, we hung out around the house listening to reggae. Of course, there was plenty of Bob Marley in the mix, but we also dug a bit deeper and found some good playlists and tunes on Spotify.  We capped the night off by watching a blast from Laura and Matt’s past – Cool Runnings!  We also read a general book about the Caribbean that we picked up from the library.

Later in the week, Matt cooked up a recipe found online, Jamaican Run Down Fish Stew.  It had a good flavor, but like many meals cooked in the household, would have been a bit more true to style and flavorful had the hot peppers called for in the recipe not been omitted.  Either way, the coconut milk paired well with the flavor of the fish, with fresh tomatoes and lime juice adding good flavor.  Homemade dumplings were also cooked up to serve the stew over, which added some good substance.

All in all, a fun time, and another country we’d love to visit once the girls are older!

This is an installment of Bryant Backyard Border Bouncing (BBBB).  For more information, please see the bottom of the About page.

 

While we started out strong with Korea, the most recent Bryant Backyard Border Bouncing experiences haven’t been quite as in depth.  Either way, we spent parts of a weekend in September learning about and eating our way through Brazil.

Here are some quick facts that we shared with the girls about Brazil:

• Brazil is the largest country in South America.
• It is the 5th largest country in the world by both land area and population.
• The Amazon River flows through Brazil, and is the 2^nd longest in the world, after The Nile.
• Portuguese is the official language spoken in Brazil.

• The climate in the majority of Brazil is tropical.

• Millions of tourists visit Brazil every year.
• There are around 2500 airports in Brazil.
• Football (soccer) is the most popular sport in Brazil with the national team consistently among the best in the world, winning the World Cup a record 5 times.

We also watched YouTube videos of Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, which the girls would like to visit someday.  It was also pretty awesome to watch videos from the perspective of hang-gliders soaring down to the beach from the surrounding cliffs.  They also loved seeing videos of Carnival, and REALLY want to go to it when they’re older!

While the only brick-and-mortar Brazilian restaurants I could find in the area are high-priced and all-you-can-eat meat extravaganzas that would be lost on kids, I did find that there’s a Brazilian food truck in town, Gaucho’s Fire.  The weekend we learned about at Brazil, the food truck was serving at an event downtown, so I headed over to pick up some to-go containers of food for the family to try.  I picked up an assortment of dishes, all of which involved meat and potatoes.  I would like to have tried some of the side dishes that they normally serve, but the menu was paired down for this large event. The girls ate a few bites here and there, but overall weren’t huge fans.  That’s OK…more for me!

For our own take on Brazilian food, I found a few recipes that were a bit healthier.  As an appetizer, I made Black-Eyed Pea and Shrimp Fritters (Acaraje).  As often is the case, they looked much better on the recipe blog than they did when executed in my kitchen!  They were decent, but I wasn’t too excited about them.  For the main dish I made roasted vegetable feijoada, a thick stew-like dish normally made with several types of meat.  I thought it turned out well, but would have loved for it to have had more spice to it.  I made it a second time a few weeks later, and added a jalapeno to the homemade salsa that tops it, and I liked it much more.  For dessert, I made Crème de Papaya, which was basically a milkshake of pureed payapa and vanilla ice cream, topped with Crème de Cassis (which I’d never heard of, but easily found at a well-stocked liquor store).  It was all decent, but none overly exciting.

I have a friend who also works in the airline industry who loves Brazil and has visited Rio de Janeiro several times, so I look forward to learning more from him, and taking the girls on a trip down there when they’re older.  Until then, Felicidades!

As we did in 2015 to London, and 2016 to Austin, and as much as we love our girls, Laura and I decided that we desperately needed a quick trip sans kids.  We had multiple ideas, and multiple plans that fell through, but what ended up working was Brussels!

After determining that the only way to get to the flight we wanted to take from New York’s JFK was to fly to LaGuardia first, we dropped the girls off for a weekend with relatives, headed to the airport, and score two seats together, one row behind first class (the one with the nice leg room for a 6’1 guy), and were on our way.  The flight was uneventful, and I managed to get some decent shots of Manhattan on the way in.  The ride on the NYC Airporter had us realizing an Uber would have been about the same price and much faster, though once arriving at JFK, we quickly got through TS Pre-Check, and got to the gate right as boarding for Delta One began.  As I saw on Delta’s employee website travel tool that we’re already been assigned seats in Delta One, we headed up to the podium and managed to be some of the first people on the plane.  As always, we enjoyed our champagne and started pursuing the food and wine menu.

I really enjoyed the shrimp and sweet potato salad, and finished Laura’s for her, as she’s not a shrimp fan.  The soup and salad were both decent, though I’ve had better on Delta previously.  The chardonnay helped.  For dinner, I had and really enjoyed the Bourbon Braised Spiced Lamb (paired with the R&G Rioja), and Laura enjoyed the tasty and spicy Dry Rubbed Smoked Chicken Breast.  And of course, two pretzel rolls were consumed.  As the ice cream leaving New York is always delicious, she ordered the pumpkin and I ordered the salted caramel, with all the toppings, and we split them.  Both were delicious. And of course I couldn’t pass on my other favorite part, the cheese plate.  Within a few minutes, I laid the seat flat into bed mode and was out within a few minutes.  Four hours later when breakfast was served, we both opted for the egg dish, though we were both still fairly full from dinner.  We later regretted that decision, as we weren’t hungry for all the food we wanted to try until late in the day.

Upon arrival, customs was fairly quick, and finding the train station, purchasing tickets via the kiosk, and boarding the train were all quick and easy.  Finding our hotel for the night, the NH Collection Brussels Grand Sablon, (purchased using points from my Chase Sapphire Reserve), was fairly easy, and about a 10 minute walk from Brussels Central station.  Even though it was only mid-morning, the agent was able to check us into a room with two twin beds pushed together, which seems to be a thing in Europe.  We could have waited for a queen, but I was just ready for a shower.  The room was on the third floor, and had a nice view of a courtyard behind the hotel. The windows opened fully, letting the cool air in.

After a quick shower, we were on our way out the door to start exploring.  The hotel was about a block away from Park Square du Petit Sablon, which sat adjacent to Palais d’Egmont, which according to Google Maps, is an “Imposing, iconic neoclassical complex housing government offices and international conferences.”  After reading plaques about each, we made our way up to Royal Square, a picturesque and very European square which once housed Brussels’ main market and original royal palace.  Around the corner was the Royal Palace of Brussels, where state functions are held, though the royal family resides elsewhere.  Luckily for us, it is only open to tour during a portion of the summer when the royal family is on vacation, and we were there the last day of tours!  After a quick wait in line for a security check, we were inside.  There are signs showing pictures are forbidden, though the young, contract security workers in each room didn’t seem to enforce this.   The building was massive, and each room was very ornate and well decorated.  We were happy to have the opportunity to see it.

From there we headed across the plaza into the Parc de Bruxelles, a large municipal park.  There happened to be a comic festival going on, so we pursued some of the tents as we passed through.  We saw a pretty interesting kids play area that was set up that we thought the girls would love, and saw a small band playing outside a café in the park.  Very nice park, and would be fun place to hang out.  From there we made our way west through the city to Grand Place, a huge city square completely encircled by elegant historic buildings dated back to the 14^th Century.  It just so happened that we stumbled upon a large festival taking place as part of Brussels Beer Weekend.  We decided that we may check it out, but a nap first would be ideal.  We stopped at a shop to get a coworker chocolate per his request, and headed to Delirium Café, an internationally known beer bar.  We split a bottle of Cantillon Gueuze, from the top producer of spontaneously fermented beers in the world, brewed in Brussels.  I then had a pour of Delirium Tremens, the flagship beer of Huyghe Brewery, who makes the Delirium series.  We were surprised and amused to see what seemed to be high school kids ordering beer at the bar next to us.  After a conversation with the bartender, we learned that while the drinking age for beer is 16 in Belgium, it’s really more of a suggestion.  Even the Wikipedia article on “Minimum legal ages in Belgium” shows all ages regarding alcohol as “rarely enforced.”  My, what a change from the United States.

We were pretty tired by this point, so we headed back to the hotel for a nap.  We were there a bit longer than we’d anticipated, but still had plenty of daylight left.  We were somewhat hungry at this point, so headed back toward Grand Palace to find a snack.  There were several places with waffles, though one stood out as there was a long line that went down the block.  Usually a pretty good indication.  We ordered one with strawberries and whipped cream, and one with chocolate fudge.  We found a couple seats at the crowded tables outside, and indulged.  Definitely the best waffles we’d ever had.

There were still a couple hours left of the beer festival, so we gave it a go. Twenty Euro gave us two tokens that served as deposits for the glasses used by each brewery for each pour, along with twenty bottle caps to use as tokens for pours.  The pours were mostly three bottle caps each, with some harder to find pours being four or five bottle caps.  We split each pour, and had about 10 total total.  Highlights were Boon Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait, which we toasted with at our wedding, a few sours not found in the US, and Westvleteren 12, which for years has been the highest rated and one of the hardest to find beers in the world.  We then walked a bit over to Moeder Lambic, one of the better known beer bars in the world.  We hadn’t had much to eat since breakfast, so we split a meat and cheese plate, while we sipped on some Gueuze Tilquin, Cantillon Kreik, and a couple Italian beers that were on as part as an Italian beer takeover.

It was getting dark toward that point, so we headed back to the hotel via Grand Palace, where the brewers were tearing down from the festival, and the evening light meshed perfectly with the lights on the surrounding buildings.  We went back to the hotel for a bit, before deciding that we would be amiss to not get some frites while in Belgium.  So we headed out to a small shop near Grand Place, where we got a large cone of frites with garlic aioli and watched some street performers break-dancing on a corner.

We were pretty zonked by this point, so headed back to the hotel, where we both slept well.  The next morning, we walked back to Brussels Centraal, hopped back and forth between platforms trying to catch the first of the many delayed trains to the airport, and finally got on one.  After a quick 15 minute ride back to the airport, we got checked in, through a huge mess at security, and after an hour long queue, finally got through passport control.  We waited at the gate for the Delta flight to JFK, and after not making it on, headed over to the United flight to Washington Dulles.  Alas, our spoiled selves got seats toward the back of a mostly full 777, though we have a set of three seats with an empty seat in the middle.  I slept off and on the whole way home, regardless of not having a lie-flat seat.  Upon arrival, we got through customs, Uber-ed to Washington National Airport, and got through security just in time to get on an early flight home that we’d expected on American.  This trip goes to show that we would often not get anywhere without flight benefits on all three major carries, as they all came through for us on this trip.

All in all, a very short and quick trip, but a nice break away as a couple.  Next time we go to Belgium, we’ll get outside of Brussels and explore some of the other cities and the countryside.