Europe Trip Pictures: #7 The World Triathalon!

We got up early to catch Aunt Jill coming out of the swimming portion and onto the biking portion of the competition.

The place we were staying was beautiful! I loved walking over a bridge and through the woods... to breakfast Grand Dude and I went!

Just a few sights on the walk to the breakfast buffet...

At breakfast!

Oh, yeah... this was a huge thing to watch out for-- you didn't want to step on one of the 100 that crawled all over the walkways all the time! I really do not like giant slugs!

These were random elephants sitting by the side of the highway...

Go Aunt Jill!!!!!!!!!!!! It was going to be awhile before she finished the bike portion, so we walked around a bit.

And finally sat down at a picnic table to socialize with the locals. :-D

It was a very sunny day!

We still were waiting for Aunt Jill to finish biking (it was 74.5 miles, afterall!), so we ordered lunch. They did have a English (or what was supposed to be) menu, but I wasn't really expecting a meatball sandwich to look like this!

It was the biggest meatball I had ever seen!!

How's a girl to eat something this big!?!? The only condiment they gave me was mustard, which I wasn't exactly fond of, but I didn't want to eat it dry, so I learned to like mustard! And have been loving it ever since... :-D

I found these cabbage flowers quite interesting when we went to buy flowers for Aunt Jill. (no, we didn't buy her those... :-( )

We situated ourselves on the bleachers after lunch and enjoyed the ocean air and sunshine while we watched athletes come and go for 5, 6 hours.

I was rather annoyed to get a bug bite smack dab in the middle of my cheek! :-}

Goin' strong! GO AUNT JILL!!!!!!

YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!! After many, many, many grueling hours she finally finished the "2008 Almere ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championship!!!!!"

Wooooohooooo!!!!!

... and then I calm down. :-) There was post-race stuff for Aunt Jill to do, so we waited patiently. But none of my waiting for anything is complete without a self-portrait. :-D I also didn't have a mirror but wanted to see how sun burned I was... since I had insisted I didn't need sunscreen... :-P

Still smiling!!!

hehe... and more waiting our part. :-D

A lot of waiting, but it wasn't boring because there was a lot to look at and watch! I really did enjoy it...

... although the third time waiting seemed a bit longer... maybe because I was hungry?

Once Aunt Jill was ready for some food, we went searching for a place to eat. We thought we'd head back into Almere... but didn't realize that all the resturants closed early on Sunday. By the time we got out of Gabby's mess (she took us on bus lanes and mazes of neighborhoods this time!!), it was getting very late, so even the fast food resturants were closing.

We finally tumbled into McDonalds 20 minutes before closing...

... and enjoyed it thoroughly! (they have a better selection in Europe, but I still got the best meal-- french fries dipped in frosties!)

Okay, so Europe isn't perfect. They have frogs. And slugs. And mosquitos. But I really enjoyed watching all the athletes and determining that I will never, ever, ever be a triathlete. Kudos to those who are!

More pictures coming (hopefully) soon...