Meeting Jennifer in Leuven

2023 will be the year of Canadian reunions and my Calgary friend Jennifer from JennandLucas kicked it off.   We go back from the Canadian mommy blog community almost 20 years ago when we were all commenting on each others blogs and I digitally met Jennifer through a friend in common.  We keep in touch via Facebook mainly and we met for the first time after all this years when Jenn drove up to meet us for dinner in Canmore during our last visit in Canada. 


A few weeks ago she announced visiting Belgium and the Netherlands with her family. We exchanged some tips of places to visit and how to travel and to meet and so she came over to Leuven 2 weeks ago where I had the honour to guide her around.  


The weather had been quite whimsical as a good stereotypical March/April demands in Belgium so with the prediction of some nasty showers and raincoats in my backpack, I headed to the train station to meet them while they were hiding for the rain at the end of the tunnel. 

It was fun too meet again (for Jennifer and her youngest son) but also to meet her husband and her oldest son for the first time. It is always so weird to meet someone from the online world and notice how familiar they feel right from the start! 


visit Heverlee

First I took them with me to "my neighbourhood" in Heverlee and showed them around at the Park Abbey and further more at Arenberg castle.   Luckily enough the sun returned.  Jan and the boys also came to join us on our touristic walk. 

Visit Leuven

With already quite some kilometres in our feet, we were motivated to head downtown to get some drinks and rest.  But of course also to admire all the historic beauty of our old town. 

Via the Arenberg castle park and university campus, we reached the Big Beguinage.  From there on we zigzagged via old medieval town walls to the city centre for some much needed drinks. 

Our boys were teaming up quite well with Jennifer's boys and were trying to do their own explanations in English. Good practise for the rest of the year!  A little later they were already bonding and exchanging candy gifts etc. Cute. 

With some more sights of Leuven we ended up back at the train station where we had a very nice dinner together at Brasserie Van De Weyer.  Ha, sitting down at the table together makes conversations a bit easier than guiding through the city so this was very welcome to get to know each other more and spend time together at ease. 

Unfortunately time flies so soon already it was time to say goodbye again.  Thank goodness there is the internet to stay in touch although we notice that everyone starts to use social media less or in different ways so even then it's not always easy. 


Anyway, I'm grateful that the internet provided us this friendship and that we had the opportunity to meet again and that she spent a full day of her precious travel time with her family in my beautiful home town.