July 30 – Racing Back to Where We Began
Four weeks later and we are finally back to the city that we started our trip in but before we got here tonight we had one more place to visit…Ciruit de Spa-Francochamps.
As a family, we have been on and off fans of watching Formula 1 racing. When we found out that we had an opportunity to attend a behind the scenes tour on the way back to Amsterdam. We had hoped to get this done during the 2:00pm tour but it turns out this is a popular activity and had to settle for the 4:00pm one.
Once we were all sorted into language groups, almost went to the dutch one but then found our way to the English/French one, we were off on the tour. Lots of information was given but seeing the Eau Rouge (Raidillion) with cars racing on it was pretty cool to see. Learning about how during the World Wars Germany occupied the area the track was on with a building remaining. Taking a tour in through the back of the garages then going up to view the press room, control centre (no pictures here are it is a security issue) and finally ending up on the podium was very cool.
Unfortunately, we were there pretty late in the day so even though the track areas were open to the public (minus the garages, pit lane and track itself as there were people doing laps in personal cars), we didn’t have much time to go explore before they shut the place down but we did go up to the restaurant at the top of the pitlane building and the new observation area before we hit the road again.
At 9:30 we finally found our hotel for the night (Best Western Airport), had a quick McDonalds meal for dinner and now just relaxing before we get ready to head home tomorrow afternoon.
As we are flying Westjet, the news of the possible ramping down/shutdown this weekend has been on our minds today at a lot. Hopefully, when we wake up in the morning, the flight that is coming from Halifax this evening will be in the air heading this way…that will mean we have a better chance of being able to get home than if it does not 🙂
One more sleep and we will be home!