Toyn Family: Italia Miracle

This week was amazing and just seconds from not happening. Betsy is the best planner that I have ever met. She had our trips to London, Scotland, Venice, Florence, and Rome all planned to the "t". Every train, hotel, or attraction was booked months in advanced. Everything went smoothly - until Monday.

Sunday we traveled to my old stomping grounds in the Flemish part of Belgium, (and one of my favorite cities in the whole world) Gent! We enjoyed the church service there and I particularly enjoyed the friendly faces that I once knew as a missionary. A fantastic family, The Verdegems, invited us over for lunch; which we loved (witloof is heel lekker!). We enjoyed talking with them and loved being in their company. Our visit was cut a little short because we needed to return to Brussels so we could get our beauty sleep. We were to catch a shuttle from the South train station in Brussels at 4:00 am that would take us to the Chareloi Airport where Ryanair is stationed. That's right: in the wee hours of the morning. The metro, or buses don't run that early so we were supposed to catch a taxi to the station - which would have been a five minute drive so we could catch the shuttle that would take another hour to get to the Chareloi Airport.

We were quite restless in the evening and we were having a hard time sleeping due to both of our excitement of our pending adventure to Italy. We talked while laying awake and eventually fell asleep around 11:00pm. I had set my alarm on my iPod...but it was for 2:30 pm. As I was deep in slumber, I remember dreaming and then, subconsciously thinking to myself: aren't you supposed to be up by now? Don't you have a shuttle to catch? My eyes burst open and I turn to my trusty iPod thinking that it would never betray me or let me down. I look at the time and it is 5:23am. I was still dazed, and I am trying to figure out what to do. I turn to Betsy and tell her the time and she exclaims, without any though, "If we pack fast, we can catch our flight that leaves at 7:15am if we take a taxi straight to the Chareloi Airport". We were frantic little chipmunks, scurrying around throwing all that we needed into our backpacks. Within seven minutes, we were out of our apartment and down at the concierge to request our taxi.

The drive to the airport from our apartment is about an hour drive. The taxi arrived at our apartment by 5:45am and we are thinking that all is well. You would have thought that "The Transporter" played by Jason Statham was our taxi driver: white collar shirt, shaved head, and an upgraded black Mercedes. We get into the taxi and it dawns on us that we still need to go through security. We also glance at the tickets and notice that the gates close at 6:45am. By now we are praying for a miracle. We let the taxi driver know our predicament and he assures us that we will arrive on time. He turns on his music to "Nostalgia" and from that point forward all I can recall are blurs of light and me watching his GPS trim down the arrival time minute, by minute.

We arrive at the Chareloi Airport at 6:30am with a taxi payment that we will not disclose. Needless to say, we raced to check-in where we didn't meet a lint. We walked up and checked-in. We got a little lost looking for the security check-point but finally found it around 6:40am. Tick-tock, tick-tock, the time is ticking! We find the security check-point and to our surprise, there is a little line! We blaze through, and sprint to the terminal. We finally arrive at the terminal at 6:47am and realize that they had just began to board! Raynair doesn't have assigned seating so you load the airplane like you would a bus - first come, first served. Since Betsy was prepared, and purchased priority boarding, we ended up on the second row of the jet!

We were supper excited that we made the flight and able to enjoy Italy. Below you can find some pictures of our amazing trip to Italia!