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