For a standard New York City trip you won’t need a rental car but as most of the readers know we are not going on a standard city trip. After the staying first 5 days in Manhattan we will travel to Staten island for the rehearsal dinner of the wedding we will attend. And from Staten Island we need to go to the party location in Garfield, New Jersey. This is almost impossible by public transportation which made us decide to rent a car for the last couple days.

For Danielle there is another important reason for renting a car. She wants to visit the 2 biggest Outlet centers in New Jersey and having a car to drive around makes this a lot easier.

As with our last 2 Florida trips we’ve booked our car with www.usa-reisen.de. And since I’m the one who is driving most of the time I got to pick the car type. This means it’s going to be a SUV again. The size should be comparable with a Chevrolet Equinox (see picture). I guess it will be big enough for the 2 of us.

Already in september we had set the a date for Philippe his 50th birthday party. The reason why the date was set early was because the party took place in Antwerpen (Belgium). Besides the birthday party we would see some people we hadn’t seen in years again.

On Saturday the 4th of February we left our place at 6 o’clock in the morning and because of the easy traffic we arrived in Belgium just after 10 o’clock. The first stop was Maasmechelen Village which is an outlet shopping center. Both of us bought new stuff Sander in the Tommy Hilfiger store and Danielle was really lucky and found a pair of Uggs boots.

After the shopping we went to the Holiday inn Antwerp City North where we would meet Ruud, Ria, Yves, Joke and Aaron. After some drinks in the hotel lobby we went out for the city to visit the Disney Story on the Meir and for a quick bite a the Subway.

After this quick bite it was time to walk back tot he hotel where Philippe, Dieter and Frank would join us for the evening. After the presenting the gifts (mustard and a Bose Soundlink) we went for a walk to Mie Katoen. Mie Katoen is a fondue restaurant. The food tastes greats and after your visit you can enjoy the smell for a couple of days since the smell sticks to every piece of clothing you wear.

After dinner we went out to a bar in the city center of Antwerpen called “Den Engel” and we finished the night in the hotel bar. Although bar is a big word it was a self-service bar but the bear tasted great. Somewhere after 3 o’clock we got to our beds. It was a long day from almost 22 hours but it was great to be party of this party.

And the best thing was that the party wasn’t over yet since it continued with a Siberian style geocaching tour. Philippe & Dieter created their own geocaching route which we wanted to walk. After breakfast together with Philippe, Dieter, Aaron, Ruud en Ria we went to the start of the tour which consisted of 5 traditional caches and one mystery cache. It was ice-cold but we had a pleasant time. Ruud (2 finds) and Sander (4 finds) found all of the 6 caches within 2,5 hours.

After the cache route we went to the Netherlands for a brief visit of our families where we slept in Kruisland at the place of Sanders sister. On Monday we drove back to Germany.

We had a great weekend and we can’t wait for the next gathering!

Picture credits and more pictures: Motorbeer.nl & PhilDie’s Fotoalbum