Neither Here Nor There

So far, my first experience driving in Europe has been mostly uneventful.  It was my first time driving a manual (stick shift) in years and years.  Of course, the only time I stalled out was across the street from my hotel at the end of the day.  The first challenge was that I needed to push down on the stick to put it in reverse.  So, it took me a bit longer to get out of the rental car lot.

After that, it was smooth sailing.  The Belgians and Dutch have wonderfully smooth roads with heaps of speeders.  I discovered a side benefit of having a GPS (my first time with one--yes, I am behind the times) is that it alerts the driver for where the speed traps usually are.

I was surprised to see more than a few farms along the way with ... ponies.  Heaps of them, really.  Other than that, the big surprise was on the smaller roads where occasionally a road with one lane in either direction would become a road with only one lane total.  So, it would lead to traffic stopping as people on either side would have to figure out which side goes first.  Good times!

One thing that was not a surprise: