Lightning Storms are Sweet!

We just had a pretty good sized one. Lots of down poring rain. Now the suns coming back. :)

That's pretty much all I had to say. Glad I wasn't outside.

Home alone...and enjoying it?

So Kristoffer is off in Stockholm this week. I didn't feel like I could afford another trip to Stockholm since we're going to Turkey next week. Plus I needed to be studying. And while staying in a hotel for free is a nice prospect, it's not so conducive to studying.

Speaking of studying, for those who are keeping tabs...I've decided to move my two CPA exams I was going to take at the end of May to the beginning of July (you can't test in June, for those of you wondering). I don't feel like I am prepared or can become prepared by the end of May, so I've pushed it back as far as I can. Better to pass these two and wait to retake the other two sometime after I start working.

So other than that, it's been pretty quite around here. This weekend we spent a lovely Friday night out. We were trying to go to a nice restaurant that was featured in my guidebooks, but everywhere we went the menus were ridiculous (ie. ~$75 for just a main dish). So we tried to find a more moderately priced place, and ended up at the most touristy restaurant imaginable. It was recommended in my top 10 guidebook, but it must have changed since they wrote it. It wasn't that great. Kristoffer ordered a "seafood platter," and that's pretty much exactly what he got. :) A huge tray filled with ice and oisters, clams, mussels, prawns, and crayfish displayed on top. He was expecting some kind of potatoes or bread or something to go along with it, but nope! Just a bunch of seafood. I had a much safer (and cheaper) dish that was pretty good. It's called Flemish Carbonnades (pictured right), and it's just basically a really good stew. So anyway, the dinner was interesting, but just way to touristy a place.

After that we had hot chocolate in the Grand Place which is really beautiful at night, all lit up (pictured left). Plus the weather here has gotten gorgeous, so it's pleasantly warm during the days and stays warm far into the evening. It was a beautiful night.

Something to note about Belgian hot chocolate is that it is literally chocolate melted in hot milk. Sometimes they melt it for you, but sometimes they bring you hot milk and hunk of chocolate or a bowl of chocolate pieces to put in the milk yourself. It's REALLY good, and oh so rich. Yummm....

Saturday we did some errands that we'd been needing to do, like buying light bulbs for all the burnt out lights in the apartment. :) And that night we went out with Kristoffer's friend Aron and a bunch of Swedish friends to celebrate Aron's birthday. We went out to a Latin club called Havana, which played some really great music, and we got our dance on! It was lots of fun, but we left early (and by early I mean 2am) because we had to get K ready for his trip Sunday. (Most clubs are open and populated until 5-6am, so everyone else was still dancing away when we left.)

After K left on Sunday, I've just been doing my thing: studying, relaxing, watching West Wing, avoiding the dishes... I think I have also solidified the fact that I want my own place when I get back. It's fun having a home to yourself. :)

Another day...

Study study study...

Another day of studying in the parliament. It's the last day, though, that I get to use the nice desks. The parliamentarians come back tomorrow. Nothing much exciting going on, except a fun email! Apparently, I get a free computer bag when I start work this August, to go along with the company computer I will be assigned. I could choose between 4 designs and I picked the rolling bag (that retails for $100!!! Wow). I figured my feet, shoulders, and mom will thank me for not trying to carry around my work on my back anymore. All of the bags were super sweet, but I think this was the most "professional" looking, if maybe not the coolest. Plus, I think it will be much easier to carry around a purse and pull a rolling bag, than trying to carry both bag and purse on shoulders (in heels, as well). :)

And Happy Birthday Grandma! Love you lots and lots!

New pictures have been uploaded!

Today I have infiltrated the European Parliament building and am using their fantastic internet to upload my pictures from this last week. I am also getting to use a great big wonderful desk to study on and a big comfy chair to sit on. Since the parliament is in session in Strausburg, France this week, everyone is gone and I was able to get a three day pass to bum around the parliament! Sweet. There is nothing like having connections. :) I can't wait till I have a desk like this!

So a new slide show is now being featured of our trip to Paris. Click on the slide show to get to my albums to see the Paris and Brussels pics from this last week, as well as my other pictures from past trips. Some of them are mine and some of them are Katie's. If you have any problems accessing the pictures let me know.

Back into the swing of things...kinda...

Cassy and Katie are now home safe and sound back in the US. And I am left with nothing but studying to do. :(

Well, that's not entirely true. I have the Istanbul trip to look forward to, but that is little consolation when I see how much of my books I need to get through before then. AHHH!!!! So much to do....yet here I am procrastinating... Oh well. You all wanted an update anyway, I'm sure!

This last week was an absolute blast. Cassy, Katie, and I had so much fun exploring Brussels and Paris that we practically walked our feet off. We saw all of the typical touristy things. In Brussels, the Manakin Pis, Grand Place, the cathedral, the Royal Palace. The first day was our grand tour, where we walked the city from bottom to top. Hitting all the major places, plus the musical instrument museum where we got a free concert. The soprano who sang was fantastic. This skinny, pretty little thing, and out came this huge gorgeous operatic voice. WOW! We had great timing since we didn't even know about the concert, but got there about 15 minutes before it started.

Before that, however, we saw a huge "to do" happening in front of the Royal Palace. We stood around for about half an hour watching the soldiers all lined up in front as well as a military band playing songs. The street was all blocked off and it was obvious that someone important was coming. Turns out the President of Hungary was arriving just then and we got to see the royal welcome. Would have been a great experience except that the Brussels weather did her thing and decided to pour rain just during the 45 minutes/hour we were standing there. Ah well, good introduction to the weather for C & K.

The second day we managed to get ourselves kicked out of a museum. Well ok, not really, but we got in trouble twice. Once for drinking water, and once for sitting outside on a terrace that apparently wasn't supposed to be open for the public. No signs. Door unlocked. But I guess you're supposed to know that, somehow? So we were pissed and kicked ourselves out. Stupid country.

WARNING, Rant ensuing: So, I have two more complaints against this country! Case Number One. Apparently they have city wide breakdowns of the few places that will accept credit cards (reference my earlier blogs on my issues with cards in this country), namely the train station and museums. Grr... We went to buy our Paris tickets, me fulling planning to put it on my credit card since its a bit of money. We get through booking all the tickets, we go to pay, and "Oh, you will need to pay with cash because our card system is down." WHAT?! You couldn't mention that before we booked? Good thing between the three of us we managed to have enough cash to get the tickets bought. Nothing works in this country when you need it. The failed credit card machines followed us the next few days.

Case Number Two. I get on the internet on Monday to check to see if C & K's flight is on time and to check bus schedules. THE INTERNET IS NOT WORKING! Now we've had problems with it working badly, but never it just fully not working. So I think, ok, its probably just a temporary thing. NO. It's down for THE WHOLE WEEK! Such a pain, considering we needed it to confirm bookings and reservations and such. Of course it would pick the one week my friends came and the internet was actually a necessity for communication.

Oh, OH! Case Number Three! So I'm on my way to get to the airport to meet C & K, and guess what... That's right! The bus I need to get to the airport on time BREAKS DOWN! This was not such a big deal, but I ended up having to take a later bus and getting there well after C & K got out. Annoying, and just one more issue I have with the reliability of things in this country.

Ok, rant done. Just needed to get that off my chest. :) Things aren't so bad really. But when you go to Paris and things work so smoothly, you realize that Belgium really is a little backwards.

And on that note... PARIS! Our trip to Paris, was really great. We got there, ended up at a pretty nice (and cheap!) hostel, and road that subway system to every touristy thing in the city! Thanks mom and dad for the Paris map you gave me! It had the subway system on the back, which was FANTASTIC! Luckily, I new pretty much how to get to everywhere already, but with the map it made it super easy. So below is an outline of pretty much what we did. Keep in mind that Paris is HUGE and that we rode the subway between just about everything.

Day 1:
-Catch the high speed train to Paris at 8am
-Check in at hostel and drop off bags
-Climb the Eiffel tower (top level was closed for wind. Two tries and two strikes for me on that) one.)
-Lunch: sandwich and over-priced drinks at a touristy cafe
-Notre Dame (Brave Kathryn hiked the stairs to the bell towers all by herself!)
-Back to hostel and a three course meal/long night out at a fantastic restaurant. Bravo to C & K for their first try at escargot!

Day 2:
-Up at 7am to get to the Louvre Museum before it opens (to get to the Mona Lisa before the lines start)
-In the Louvre, saw the Mona Lisa (still underwhelming), Venus de Milo, and many other fantastic works of art
-Walked to the Opera House
-Opera House tour
-sandwich lunch in a park at the foot of the Champs Elysees.
-Saw the Arc De Triumph
-Saw the stained glass windows at Saint Chappel
-Hiked the massive hill of stairs to the Sacre Couer for the best view of Paris
-Had ourselves a Crepe
-Snapped a picture of the Moulin Rouge (in the daytime. No sketchy redlight district at night this time.)
-Back to the hostel to pick up bags
-Dinner near the train station
-Back on the train and pulling into Brussels around 11:30pm.

Then, I met up with Kristoffer at a house warming party. C & K went back to the apartment because they were tired (NO KIDDING!). And I pretty much was falling asleep on my feet. Got home around 3am and SLEPT IN!

Saturday was a lazy day. Had some coffee, bought some chocolates, and watched some House. That night we went to a jazz restaurant, where they serve Italian food and play live jazz, blues, and funk. It was so fun! Great way to end their stay, and over all a really fun week.

I'll get some pictures loaded sometime this week, but I've got to sort through them first. Anyway, quite the adventure. There were some iffy moments, but for the most part everything went really smoothly in Paris. Quite a "Tour de Force" if I do say so myself! :)

TP and Bruges

I’d better get an update written today before my friends come; otherwise it’s probably going to be another week before you hear from me!

Cassy and Katie are coming in today (woo hoo!) at 4:40pm, and I’m really excited! It will be great to get to show them around to all the fun places I’ve already seen and see some new things myself.

But, anyway…This last weekend!

On Friday, as you know, was the infamous Swedish Trivial Pursuit game at K’s boss’s house. It turned out to be quite the get together since 9 people showed up, so including Paula (pronounced Pow-la, yes pow, like POW! in the batman shows—the hostess) and her husband Peter (pronounced Pee-et-er) there were 11 of us to play. This was great, because it meant we could play on teams, and I would just be a third wheel.

Dinner was fantastic. Very Swedish. It was a stew with beef and onions and really great spices, with sides of boiled potatoes, salad, 3 different cheeses, baguette, and Swedish “crisp-bread.”

Afterwards, I was given the honor to draw names, and I happened to draw them perfectly so that all the teams of two were people who were already sitting next to each other at the dinner table. Then we thought that, to make it fair, I wouldn’t be on K’s team automatically, but instead I would draw a name and that’s whose team would get me. Luckily, I drew Peter, who was K’s partner anyway. I had the magic hands that night!

So Swedish Trivial Pursuit IS in Swedish and many of the questions are very Swedish/Scandinavian based (hence the reason I got to be a third wheel). I did manage to answer a question about the Casini Space craft (which planet was it sent to collect data about? Saturn.) and who was the first black actress to win an Academy Award? Halli Bari. So I didn’t feel totally useless, but it is frustrating when for the most part you have NO chance of knowing the answer. Our team didn’t win, but it was a fun night anyway, and a great chance to get to know the people K work’s with at the Parliament better.

Saturday was a late start since we didn’t get back till 3am. We managed to crawl out of bed around 11am and took the train to Bruges.

Bruges is a small, medieval, VERY touristy little town towards the north shore of Belgium. They have huge old gothic buildings everywhere and are very famous for their handmade lace industry. We got there around 2:30, started wandering around the town, which is full of horse drawn carriages, canals with swans and ducks, and these really ancient, beautiful buildings. It’s all very “European,” and with the sunny day it was quite romantic. When the cars and mopeds weren’t driving by you almost felt like you were back in the 1800s.

We visited a small convent and the great cathedral in town, and had ourselves a funny surprise. In the Cathedral there was a choir singing, so we sat down to listen for a while and suddenly K leans over and whispers, “They’re Swedish!” And sure enough, they were a mixed choir from a town about 70 kilometers outside of Stockholm; this was their first trip to Belgium. They sang all sorts of Swedish folk and traditional religious songs. They were very good. I have some video of the performance I will try and post. K had a chat with the director afterward, who said they had just gotten done with a tour around Brussels. It was a fun coincidence to go all the way to Bruges and end up hearing a Swedish Choir! You just can’t get away from those Swedes!

The rest of the day we wandered some more, saw the two main town squares and headed out to see the old windmills before dinner. It was quite a walk, but worth it. They are on little hills that provide a great view of the city. Afterwards, we walked back to a restaurant that my guide book suggested for a traditional Belgian dinner of Waterzooi (a fish stew, this one was made with 5 kinds of fish!). We finished off the night with a quiet walk back to the train station, now that all the other tourists were gone or eating dinner.

Sunday was spent grocery shopping, studying, and doing laundry, which turned out to be a fiasco. We use a laundry facility that is around the block from our place and it’s usually not to busy and pretty clean. We threw our clothes into the washing machines, put in our wash tokens, and NOTHING HAPPENED. The machines didn’t start, the light didn’t come on, the doors didn’t lock, and we could not get our coins back. Considering that each wash token costs 2.90 Euros (about $4.50) and we had just lost 2 of them, we were upset. Some other girls were there who said that they had a similar problem and had called the service man. Long story short, it took them 30 minutes to come fix the machines (seemed like a breaker had flipped) and another 20 to get our coins refunded (because of course he didn’t speak English). So the whole process took twice as long as it usually does. What a pain. But at least we didn’t loose our money.

Other than the laundry thing, it was a very nice weekend. My studying is coming along pretty well, though it could always go faster.

A slide show from Bruges will be up soon, as well as those videos of the choir.

Bye bye for now!

Tip of the day...

...Don't leave your wallet at home.

I'm walking out the door to go study at my cafe. Keys? Check. Books? Check. Pen and highlighter? Check. Cell phone? Check. Have a nice two hour study session. Go to pay for coffee and a bottle of wine for this evening...NO WALLET!!! Luckily, this is my favorite cafe, so I've only been in there just about every other day. So, they know me. Plus we've bought bread and stuff from them before. I ask if I can leave my camera (yes, I had my CAMERA in my purse, but NOT my wallet, oye) while explaining that I live just around the corner. He says, no problem, waving away my proffered camera. I race home, I'm sure beet red, and there's my wallet sitting on the table. Right where I knew I'd left it. Race back. Pay.

It's nice to be a regular.

And then the internet started working...

I have finally manged to get a slide show up and running! You can click on the slide show to go to the picture site where the pictures are bigger and include my captions. Currently showing are my pictures from Waterloo. Unfortunately, they are not as fantastic as I would have liked. Circumstances as they were, it was difficult to take very good pictures. That and I was often so into looking at things that I forgot to take pictures of them at all! Grr... Oh well, I'll just have to go back. :)

Well, its 11:45am. I'm still in my pj's. I need to study. Time to get dressed.

Looking forward to Swedish Trivial Pursuit tonight, and a free dinner! Whoo hoo!

My cafe

I have a new friend! Her name is Dodi and she lives right next to my favorite cafe. She is always so happy to see me when I stop into the cafe, and she has fur, four paws and a little wagging stump.

Yes, Dodi is a dog. She belongs to the owners of my favorite cafe. One of the first days I was in the cafe, Dodi came over to say hello, so I pet her for a long time. Now, every time her owners walk her through the cafe, or if she manages to escape from the back room, she has to come over and say hi.

This cafe is just around the corner from our place and they serve fantastic coffee. Plus, when you order you get this neat little tray that includes your sugar, cream, a chocolate, and a glass of water. All for much cheaper than some of the other cafes that only give you coffee. Maison Renardy is owned by a family and they make their own chocolates, candies, bread, pastries, and desserts. It's a great place to study, or to just have my daily coffee fix. It's so fantastic. Plus, the people who own it are very kind and friendly, much more than at other places. I just love it!

There is just something really fantastic about European Coffee. I think it's the fact that it's always espresso. You never get drip coffee. It's really strong, with thick milk, and you almost always get a little chocolate with it.

Besides spending my days studying and drinking coffee, not much else is going on. We're going to a party on Friday hosted by Kristoffer's boss Paula. It's a dinner and Trivial Pursuit night. Swedish TP of course! So, this will be my third time playing Swedish TP, and I think I've only ever played the English version once! Oye. These Swedes and their trivial pursuit.

Weather and Waterloo

Ok, ok, I suck. I didn’t get my blog written yesterday. But in my defense, I was studying so I was doing something productive! Kinda. Anyway, to make up for my lapse here is the longest blog ever (I think).

So, another pretty low key week here. It’s actually sunny today, which is a change from the normal bi-polar weather that’s usually going on. It generally follows something like: gray. wind. clouds. rain. clouds. DOWNPOUR. wind. 100 MILE PER HOUR GUSTS. sprinkling rain. sun. couds. wind. repeat. Each of which lasts for about 5 minutes. That’s a pretty normal day. And I thought Seattle was known for freaky weather.

Anyway, this last weekend! I had a really fun trip to Waterloo. Kristoffer had a test at a school there, the city center is about 12 miles south of Brussels, and so I decided to tag along. The test he was taking is something like the SAT’s but slightly more important. They use it to determine who gets into classes in the Universities since you don’t actually apply to a university, but you apply directly for whatever classes you want to take. So students retake this test quite a bit because the higher your score, the easier it is to get into the classes you want.

Saturday started at 6am with us trying to catch a bus to be at Waterloo around 7:45. K’s test started at 8:30am. A frantic run around the train/bus station finally ended with us finding and jumping onto the bus, the doors closed and we were off! We barely made it; thank goodness the bus was late leaving! I’ve had a lot of close calls with transportation these days.

We got to Waterloo and Kristoffer needed to take a taxi from the bus stop to the school, but after calls to THEE two taxi companies that service there, both said “Not possible” because apparently they weren’t open. A panicked Kristoffer and I finally managed to find a cab that was just driving down the street (pure luck!), and I sent Kristoffer on his way.

So there I was at 8:15 in the morning in Waterloo. Keep in mind that this is still Belgium, and in Belgium NOTHING opens until 10, 9:30 at the earliest. So I sat on the bus stop bench, and ate my croissant and juice I had brought with me, trying to decide what to do. Instead of waiting around for the tourist office to open, I decided to take a walk down the main street and look at the shops. Waterloo is very beautiful.

About 9am. I found an Ibis hotel, which is a chain similar to Motel 6 or Best Western. I stopped in to use the restroom (and warm up a bit), and was able to get a free map of the city from the receptionist. I realized that it wasn’t so far to the actual battlefield from where I was. I was planning on taking a bus but since I had much more time than money, I embarked on the 3-mile-or-so walk.

For those who may not know, Waterloo was the great battle between Napoleon and the Allied forces lead by the British Duke of Wellington, where Napoleon and the French were finally defeated on June 18, 1815. The landscape is mostly farm land and has been kept/restored to how it was at that time.

The Sunken Road to Ohain on the bus tour

I bought the “I-want-to-do-everything” pass (student rate, woo hoo!), and started my morning off with the BUMPIEST bus ride around the battlefield. Imagine riding down the bumpiest row in an orchard that you can remember, now add a hard seat with no real cushion or springs and a bus with suspension made to handle a full load of people. Only it was just me and one other guy. We’re talking enormous potholes. Anyway, hopefully you get the picture.

The tour was in 3 languages and took you to all the different farms and key areas of the battle. Really fascinating. After that I saw the Panorama display of the battle: “An immense fresco places you in the heart of the battle, completed with amazing sound effects.” I think amazing is a little over the top for a descriptor, but it was a beautiful painting none-the-less. When I came out, it was raining, so I ran to the visitor’s center to see the Audiovisual show and a Film of the battle, both of which I got to see all by myself in these huge theaters (there was hardly anyone there that day). The show was a model of the battle set up with lighting and miniatures and showed you hour by hour the movements of the troops in the battle. The Film was cheesy, and more for kids. I came out from that and it was still raining.

Now, I need to digress a little and explain to you why the rain was a particular problem. That morning I had asked Kristoffer to check the weather. As I’ve mentioned before, this is almost a futile effort because of the sporadic weather patterns in Belgium. However, being that it was 6 in the morning, and I wasn’t really awake, when he said, partly cloudy with some sun, I believed him and didn’t bring my umbrella. Really stupid.

So now it’s pouring rain, and the last attraction that I had to see in that area was the Lion Mound. The Lion Mound is a huge conical hill that was built by the Dutch on the place where the Prince of Orange, their leader, was wounded in the battle. There are 226 stairs to the top which is crested by an enormous statue of a lion that is glaring down toward France (oh these Europeans and their symbolism). Being the super tourist that I am, I thought, “Oh it’s not raining that hard, and I’m from Seattle!” So I whipped up my hood and started up the hill. What I didn’t count on was that it would start monsooning, and that when I got to the top of the hill, not only would it be raining, but crazy-windy as well. So after I staggered up to the top, I hid on the downwind side of the statue so at least I wouldn’t get the wind. Snapped a couple of sad pictures, and slopped my way back down the stairs, which now all had puddles on them. I was the only person climbing at that time, to state the obvious.

So now, I’m soaked from the knees down, my jacket is dripping, I’m sweaty from the climb, and it costs 40 cents to use the bathroom. On principle I refuse to pay for toilets unless in dyer emergency, so I instead wandered over to the wax museum, to warm up and dry a little. The wax figures were nice, but what was really interesting was the battle debris that they had on display at the end: Napoleon’s sword and hat, musket balls, armor, and even skulls that had been found. The skulls were discovered in the foundations when the museum was built and it was very obvious that the men had died from battle wounds.

It was still raining, so I decided to have some lunch at the Napoleon Bivouac Café and Restaurant. I sat as close to the HUGE fire as I could to dry a little more. Had a coffee and a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. and spent the meal rereading Victor Hugo’s description of the battle of Waterloo from Les Miserables, which I am crawling my way through now. I wanted to see if he accurately described the battle, and from what I had seen that day, I think he did very good job.

By the time I was done, it had stopped raining, the sun had come out, so I opted to go ahead and walk back into town.

The last visit of the day, was to a museum next to the bus stop where Wellington had spent the night before and after the battle. It was a lot of the same information, but added some more history from the British/Allied side of the battle.

I met up with Kristoffer after that, and we had some coffee and then headed back to Brussels, in the midst of another monsoon. Crazy, ridiculous weather.

That night we had dinner at a friend’s house, and Sunday was a much more relaxed day. We visited the comic strip museum in the afternoon, since apparently Belgium in the birthplace of comic strips. And if one needed any more proof that this is a strange country, the man who created the Smurfs was a Belgian from Brussels.

Well, I think that brings me pretty much caught up! This was a super long blog for only chronicling one day, but it was just such an eventful day, all by myself, that its fun to share all the details.

If anyone wants to know more about anything I have done or seen, let me know. It’s hard for me to know what details to include so much of the time, so if you want more descriptions or a fuller account of anything specific, I can do that!

Now I’m off to study. That’s my primary activity these days.

Oh! A couple of notes for you brave souls who are still reading.
First: I got my start date for Ernst & Young: August 6^th.
Second: If you haven’t noticed, my itinerary has been updated. We’ll be heading off to see the land of Turkey at the beginning of May for our last excursion! We have a friend we know that has been studying there for a while, so we’re going to crash at her place. Istanbul, here we come!

Me and Napoleon

Angela and Michelle's Visit + Antwerp & Amsterdam

The long awaited update! So, I’m going to try and make this as interestingly brief as possible, including only the most important details. yeah. We’ll see how well that goes.

Ok, the last thing I really left you with was back in Sweden! (Sheesh, that seems like forever ago.) So….

Antwerp's Grote Markt

Monday, March 24:
We got home from the airport late after a whole day of traveling. My friends Angela and Michelle had already been in the city since 6am Sunday morning, so we were anxious to get home and get the apartment cleaned up for when they came. They managed to get to our place without too much trouble, so that day ended well.

Tuesday, March 25:
After a very late start, since A & M where still jet-laggin a bit, we started out on a walk to see some of Brussels. Come to find out they had managed to see most of the really touristy stuff the two days before, so our itinerary was slightly less of the Day 1 tourist attractions.

We started off walking past the Royal Palace (yes, Belgium is a monarchy), which isn’t open for tours this time of year. Sad. So we took lots of pictures of the outside and the guards doing their walk. Next stop was the Musee du Jouet, a toy museum that had toys dating back to the 18^th century. We almost thought we were going to get to see a marionette show, but for some reason it was cancelled or wasn’t actually happening…some woman came and made an announcement in French and all the children dispersed, so we weren’t sure what happened there. Anyway, a very quirky, unconventional museum.

After that we had coffee across from the Parliament building and decided on the course of action for that night. We tried to go see the Cathedrale des Saints Michel et Gudule, which looks quite a lot like Notre Dame de Paris, but we only managed to get in for about 4 minutes before it closed. After that we went to Grand Place to pick up some touristy stuff for A & M to bring home. Dinner and bed was the final note on the agenda.

That night I also found out about the passing of my Great Grandmother. A tough night, but everyone was really understanding about everything. So thanks to Angela and Michelle for helping me not let that put a damper on their time here.

Wednesday, March 26:
I hung out at home that day. A & M went to an Army museum, I think. Kristoffer took part of the day off to stay with me, and we spent the afternoon in a café around the corner. We had dinner that night in this great asian restaurant. They have this fantastic calamari dish that I love. But anyway, this was a quieter day.

Thursday, March 27:
I decided to go with my friends on an overnight trip to Antwerp (in northern Belgium) and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. We had a little snafu with our train ticket to Antwerp. For some silly reason, the guy in the ticketing office had sold us a ticket that wasn’t valid until 9am, but had told us that we could take the 8:20 train. This wasn’t a matter of miscommunication. We knew our tickets wouldn’t be valid to leave the Netherlands until after 9am the next day, but another lady the day before had said that stipulation did not apply in Belgium for our initial trip. Of course, on the train, the ticketer told us our tickets were not valid and we had to buy an additional 7 Euro ticket to get to Antwerp. Sillyness. But very typical of this country: the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. There are a lot of things that don’t work in this country, this has just been added to my list.

ANYWAY, once we got to Antwerp it was great. We stopped at a café, because nothing else was open yet (lame considering we had paid to be there that early!), and then went to a really great Museum called Rubenhuis. It’s the house of this famous Belgian architect/painter, and it was really interesting and a beautiful estate. We wandered around Antwerp and saw the main market (Grote Markt), an ancient fortress which is now a maritime museum, got lost a couple times, got back on track, and saw the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-Kathedraal (which was GORGEOUS, but cost 2 Euro to go all the way into, so we didn’t, plus no time).

One thing to mention about Antwerp: it’s is in the northern part of the country, which is the Flemish area. They speak Flemish which sounds (and reads) like a strange combination of Swedish and German. There were words that I could pick out that were like Swedish and there were words that Michelle and Angela could pick up out that were like German. Weird. Good thing they all speak English!

Next we went to Amsterdam and found a cheap hotel. We wandered around a bit, and even saw the Red Light district, which was sketchy. We were pretty tired from wandering around Antwerp all day so we crashed a little early.

Friday, March 28:
We started off the day with a decent hotel breakfast and headed out to see the sights of Amsterdam! After dropping our bags off in a locker at the train station, we took an ubber-touristy canal ride which was somewhat interesting if not just visually nice. Then we went to the Anne Frank Museum in the house where she and her family hid from the Nazis for over 2 years. It was really fascinating and very well presented.

We tried to go see the Jewish Museum after that, but got lost on our way so we decided to head back towards the train station. A massive hunt for souvenirs ensued where I was looking for these really cute little magnets that we had seen the night before. After scouring every souvenir shop we passed for about an hour, we finally found the place we were at the night before! yay! Never again, will I think “Oh I’ll just buy it tomorrow…” What a pain.

Hopped the 6pm train home (literally! we jumped onto the train as it was pulling out!) and got back to Brussels about 9pm.

Angela & Michelle in the Canal Boat in Amsterdam

Saturday, March 29:
A & M decided to take another day trip out to Bruges near the west coast of Belgium, I was pretty wiped from the last two days, so I decided to stay home. We had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants nearby. I bought a rose on our way home for the little remembrance thing I was going to do for Great Grandma the next day, and we spent the rest of the afternoon in our café around the corner called Maison Renardy. This place is a favorite of mine and I’ll have to write more about it later. That night, after A & M got back, we took them to the proclaimed “Best Pomme Frites in Brussels.” It’s pretty much a Dick’s restaurant style, outdoor, walk-up-window, fast food place that serves darn good fries (Pomme Frites). And since it has no dining area, all the bars around the area allow you to eat your food with a drink purchase from them. Pretty good deal, and again, darn good fries. Maybe not the best I’ve ever had, but good good good.

Sunday, March 30:
Michelle and Angela left to go back to the states.
The rest of this day is chronicled in my previous blog, so I won’t repeat that again here.

YAY! almost caught up!

This last week nothing very exciting happened. I quit my job, and spent a lot of time at my favorite café studying. Tomorrow (I promise), I will write about my excursion to Waterloo yesterday, which was quite fun. And perhaps post some pictures if the internet is cooperating.

Alright, signing off cuz its time for bed!