Friday/Saturday

The austrailian "restaurant" turned out to not be a restaurant after all. Apparently it is just a wine shop that does food pairings during their wine tastings. But as with all things in Brussels, they weren't having any wine tastings this weekend. We stopped in anyway since it's near the parliament and bought a bottle of Shiraz/Granache that we will probably try out tonight.

Friday, we went through the shopping district. I bought some shirts and Kristoffer showed me where he bought me my purse. We pretended we had a lot of money and walked through the rediculously expensive stores and acted like we might buy things. :) Then we had a waffle and a Karmeliet, and then a coffee at our favorite cafe in the ghetto of Brussels while we read magazines.

We went out that night to my favorite Moules restaurant, where they serve moules avec curry et frites (steamed mussels with curry and fries). We met up with some Swedish and Dutch people that K works with afterward for some drinks at a pub nearby. The Dutch are amazing people that really do speak four languages!

Yesterday, we took a day trip to the lovely city of Ghent, which is much like Bruges but less touristy. They have beautiful canals and town squares. We missed being able to see the most famous piece of artwork in Ghent because they close it at 3:45pm...could they pick a more random close time? We thought it closed at 5, like the rest of the church...shame on us for making that assumption. Oh well. It's Belgium.

The rest of Ghent was great. It's a fantastic city to just wander around. We walked for about an hour and then thought we should look at the guide book to see if there were other things we should see and do. Turns out we had seen and done just about everything that was recommended. We stopped in at a pub that serves over 250 kinds of Belgian beer, had a meal at a spot that seemed popular with locals, and wandered around the canals and the large cathedral. Beautiful day...headed home...and promptly fell asleep...at 9pm...we both think we're getting old. :)

Today we're heading to the royal art museum and Grande Place, but first breakfast...er...brunch!

Here's a piece of trivia for you....the most expensive burger in the world...the FluerBurger 5000...it actually costs $5,000. And where else, but in Las Vegas! http://www.highstakesliving.com/the-5000-burger.html

I´m Back!

As much as I complain about this city, it is fun to be back in Brussels. All the languages everywhere...French, Flemish, German... I cannot wait to have a waffle, and pomme frits with red wine, and moules, and...I actually really love the food here. Kristoffer made me breakfast with eggs and bacon and my specially requested curry chicken spread. :) Which probably sounds very strange, but it is really good on baguettes for breakfast.

But let me back up a minute...

My flights were good for the most part. The first leg from seattle to DC was great. The flight was only about half booked and so there was no one in the middle seat of my row. The second leg from DC to Brussels had such potential to be great...the economy seats were totally booked when I checked in, but it turned out the person next to me must have upgraded or missed the flight or something because there was no one there! This is fantastic news on a transatlantic flight because it means you can s-p-r-e-a-d out! Unfortunately, I had a family sitting behind me with two little children who constantly kicked my seat for the first couple of hours. When they finally passed out I was able to relax and get some sleep. A whole 2 hours, but better than nothing.

I´m really glad I did all carryon with my luggage. It´s so nice to just hop off the plane and go. I totally recomend it if at all possible. After having my luggage lost/delayed on 3 seperate occasions, I can safely say that carryon is the way to go.

Today is quite nice weather wise. K wants to go to an Australian restaurant tonight where they do Auzzie wine tasting. What better than Australian wines with French style food in Belgium. :)

So here it is 11:30am and according to my internal clock it is more like 2:30am. And I forgot how annoying European keyboards are...they are Qwerty for the most part, but the symbols are all screwed up...it took me about 2 minutes to find the colon for the last sentance! A demonstration of some of the fun symbols available on this keyboard: £öäß姰

Well, pat yourself on the back for making it through another ramble of mine. I gotta learn to be less wordy...haha...yeah...right... :)