Bruge Day Trip

After a pretty normal week Keith and I decided to head up to Bruge (Bruges, Brugge, however you spell it) on Saturday to continue our Belgium experience. Before we headed out we printed a map and a brochure we found that suggested a walking tour of the city. It was only about an hour and 20 minute drive through beautiful countryside to the heart of the city. We were really lucky, although still pretty cool outside, the rain had finally decided to let up for the day. We came up out of the parking garage in the middle of a city right out of Busch Gardens. A bustling gorgeous little town. We decided to start where our tour suggested, however once we realized that each little street was amazing, we just decided to put away the map and do a little exploring. We ducked down a little side street to find an adorable courtyard filled with cafes and shopping. (Any ladies interested in shoes and purses Bruge is the place to be!) We ambled down a few more streets, passing cute shops, and fantastic architecture. Just so everyone knows, it's not a rumor, there is chocolate in Belgium, lots of chocolate in Belgium, and Bruge seems to have some of the most creative, cool chocolate I've ever seen. We of course thought it was our duty to get a sampling of some of the sweet temptations, just to compare of course :)

We continued to stumble around and found the Grand Place, which looked a lot like all the other city centers we've seen so far but for some reason it just doesn't get old. We decided to pass on the over priced lunch in the city center and searched for something a little more tucked away. We found a neat little place in another courtyard that had horse drawn carriages pulling tourists around. Weird to be some place so crowded but still peaceful and relaxing, a hard experience to describe. After a couple of mid-day beers Keith and I discovered a whole other way to view the city with a canal ride. It was amazing, it was like discovering an entire new world. This canal was significantly smaller than those in Amsterdam, which made it all the more charming.

Honestly Keith and I both enjoyed this trip more than our time in Brussels, it was just a much more interesting city for walking around. It was great to be able to do all of that and still be home to spend the evening with Bailey. She still needs to do some work on her "controlled" walking before she is invited on these kinds of trips, so Keith and I are planning to spend some time with her in our local city square for practice. Of course things were back to normal on Sunday, rainy and cold :)

Amsterdam

We decided to use my four day weekend to drive up to Amsterdam. We dropped off Bailey at the vet's house (she does boarding out of her home as well) and headed north with our trusty TomTom guiding us to the Golden Tulip hotel in Amsterdam. We made surprisingly good time on the drive considering the driving snow / sleet storm that we were going through. You haven't lived until you've been driving through the Netherlands in a blinding snow storm on a five lane highway packed with trucks and trying to read roadsigns in Flemish. Fun times!

Once we passed Antwerp and crossed into the Netherlands, the snow let up a little and we stopped for lunch at a rest stop. This place of course had a gas station and the obligatory McDonalds, but there was also a small but well stocked market. We were able to get fresh sandwiches and fries, but they also had meats, fish, fruit, and anything else you would find at a normal market. We took our sandwiches and sat in a very nice restaurant complete with a fountain and books to read while you ate. Much nicer that any rest area I've seen back home.

The rest of the drive had off and on snow, but less traffic. True to Holland stereotypes, we saw all sorts of windmills, big and small. There were the old wooden ones that the Dutch have been using for hundreds of years, and then we saw the 300 ft tall modern ones outside the Electrabel power company. We pulled into the hotel parking lot about 3 1/2 hours after we left Mons, not bad considering the stop for lunch and poor weather conditions.

The hotel was very nice, we had a good sized room with our own bathroom. Everything was newly renovated and the hotel was right on a canal. Our room didn't have a canal view, but we had a few drinks and a meal in the restaurant where we were able to see the water. It was extremely expensive, but we were very happy with it.

Our first destination was the Van Gogh museum where they have what else, but Van Gogh artwork. The museum itself was quite nice, but the collection was a little disappointing. They didn't have several of our favorites...I don't know if they were on loan or if they were in another museum. I tried to take a few pictures, but was only able to get one before a 4 foot tall picture Nazi came over and yelled at me. I later watched him yell at another guy for taking photographs of the city out the window. I think he was just drunk on power. Anyway, the museum was nice, but as we have both seen the Louvre and Smithsonian, we were not blown away by it.

Next, we walked across the street to the Amsterdam Diamond Museum. The city is well known for its diamonds, so we figured this would be a very impressive display of some amazing jewelery. Boy were we wrong...there were literally more diamonds on Elizabeth's finger than in the whole Amsterdam Diamond Museum! We paid 12 Euro to watch a 10 minute movie on how diamonds form, and then walk through and look at replicas of famous jewelery. Replicas! Not one single diamond in the whole diamond museum!

We were pretty sick of museums at this point, so we decided to just walk the rest of the way to the Central Station in the heart of Amsterdam. This is where the city really shined. The architecture is amazing, and the row homes right on the canals are just beautiful. We stumbled upon the famous Amsterdam flower market, which is a bunch of flowers shops all built on floating platforms in the canal. Despite it being winter, they still had some of the most amazing tulips you have ever seen. The other fascinating thing here was the abundance of boat homes. We later read that there are about 10,000 people living on boats that they just parked in the canals. Some of them looked like they were ready to sink into the water at any moment, while others looked like luxurious yachts.

We made our way to the main plaza which was very similar to that of any other European city, except instead of the standard living statues, they had a guy dressed as Darth Vader. Strange. We passed several very nice shopping areas, as well as countless cafes and restaurants. Overall, Amsterdam is a very nice city to just walk around in.

After that, we called it a night. We had drinks and a dinner in our hotel, which as I mentioned had a very nice canal view. The next day we bought tickets for the "hop on - hop off" canal tours. Basically it was a glass top boat that took you on a tour of the city through the canals. It also functioned as a water taxi, since we could get off at any stop and get back on later. It was quite convenient, and the tour was very relaxing and informative. However, I think if we go back to Amsterdam when it's warmer we would do as the locals do and rent a bike. Bikes are far more popular than cars in the city, probably because the city is so well setup for it. There are bike lanes on every street, including special stop lights for bike traffic. As you can see from the pictures, the bikes are tied up to every bridge, fence, and lamp post in the city. It's quite a sight!

And what trip to Amsterdam would be complete without a walk through the Red Light District? I don't know how to describe this area other than to say that everything you've heard about it is true. There are countless "coffee shops" in which people simply drink beer and smoke marijuana. The smell is so strong that you can get high just walking by these places. Every store on the street sells drug paraphernalia, pornography, or a combination of both. There are strip clubs, topless bars, even live sex shows. Then there are the "window girls". Down every side street are just tiny rooms with a door and a full sized window. Here, prostitutes stand half naked in the window luring guys in to their tiny hotel room. It was one of the strangest (and possibly saddest) things I have ever seen.

Finally, we finished up our Amsterdam trip with lunch and a beer at the Heineken Hoek...which apparently translates to Heineken Corner. It was a nice little cafe with a great view of one of the shopping squares. Although we've really started to enjoy the Belgian beer, we figured we couldn't leave Amsterdam without having a Heineken or two.

Overall, it was a great trip despite the weather. Amsterdam is a beautiful city with amazing architecture. Elizabeth and I are just about ready to purchase one of the homes on a canal there. The other great part about the city is that unlike most other European cities, everyone speaks fluent English and are proud to do so. It really makes getting around the city easy.

It's still both odd and exciting to be in one country in the morning and home in another country hours later. The best part of getting home was picking up our muddy and tuckered out Bailey who spent the weekend playing with seven other doggies. Living abroad isn't all fun and games though, today is back to reality...laundry, cleaning, dog washing, and avoiding the sometimes blizzard like conditions outside.

Mini Europe

Today we went back to Brussels to visit the area around the Atomium. There they have an Imax theater, some shops and restaurants, and of course the attraction that we went to see, MiniEurope. It is a fairly large park like area with scale models of major European cities. The park has a few buildings from each country that is a member of the European Union, as well as a few other random models. So, they of course had the Eiffel Tower (about 20 feet tall), Big Ben, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but also there is the main EU headquarters here in Brussels, and Mount Vesuvius complete with smoke, sound effect, and shaking ground to simulate an eruption. The whole area had little rivers and lakes, complete with little moving boats and giant Koi that made the models look tiny. It was fun to see the building that we have already seen, as well as get some ideas for travel while we're out here.

In other news, we took Bailey to the vet this week to make sure everything is in line for her registration here in Belgium. Apparently she gets a little "passport" too, with vaccination reports instead of visas. The vet is a very nice younger lady who an American friend out here recommended. Her English isn't perfect, but we were able to communicate pretty well. She converted her garage into a vet office, and she boards dogs and cats in her house as well for only 17 Euro / day....much cheaper than back home. We've found several boarding places, but this is the only cage - free way we could find so far.

Due to the Easter holiday, I have this Friday and next Monday off work, so we decided to do a more major trip next weekend. Our first choice was Rome, but we forgot about the draw of the Vatican on Easter, so prices were just too high. After some more research, we decided to go to Amsterdam. It's only a two and a half hour drive, so we don't have to pay for a flight. The hotels there are outrageously expensive, but at least the transportation is cheap. The hotel we found is right on the water and in the heart of the city, so it should be fun.

Brussles Trip Two

There it is, the picture you all have been waiting for, me devouring a Liege waffle in Brussels yesterday. Go ahead, make your best waffle jokes. More pictures are on the website now too.

For our first out of Mons experience together, we took the train up to Brussels. Of course step one was to get a waffle, so Elizabeth and I split the chocolate covered, 10,000 calorie delicacy that you see pictured here. As always in Belgium, it was fantastic.

After our morning waffle, we walked over to the Grand Place. Unfortunately they were in the process of removing a stage and giant tent from the center of the square, presumably from some event on Friday night. It really ruined the view, so we'll just have to go back soon so Elizabeth can get the full ambiance there. Despite the slightly tarnished view, we did the touristy thing and had lunch at a little restaurant in the square. We sat up on the second floor where there was a nice view of the square and had a sandwich and yet another new delicious Belgian beer.

It was quite chilly yesterday so we decided to take one of the tour buses around town instead of the walking tour. Well, just before we started out, they pulled back the roof of the bus so we could get a better view. Very thoughtful of them, but we were freezing! Anyway, the bus drove us around the city for about an hour and half and we got a quick overview of the city. We found several things that we plan to explore in more detail on a later trip, especially the Atomium (the giant silver atom in the pictures). Apparently you can go to the top and get an amazing view of all of Brussels, and near the base is Mini-Europe where the have scale models of all of the famous structures in Europe. Very cool.

We're going to spend some time this afternoon planning our next trip. I have a four day weekend around Easter in a few weeks, so maybe we'll do Amsterdam or something...
so many places to see!

Almost two weeks

So I've almost been in Belgium two weeks and still really excited that we are here! Not much exciting to report yet, we've mostly done things to get settled in. I am getting a lot more confident about driving and grocery shopping. So much is familiar, but it's those small differences that can create a lot of anxiety. Figuring out where to weigh fresh vegetables was an obstacle, and finding a cake or cake mix for Keith's birthday was interesting. But with patience and willingness to comprise it's pretty cool. I got Keith a Flan cake that was awesome! They truly have an obsession with fries. There are whole aisles dedicated to frozen bags of fries. Don't get me wrong I love fries but you'd think it was a crime to not have them with every meal.

Keith and I made a trip to IKEA in Brussels last weekend. Pretty cool, really easy to get to, it's right next to the nuclear plant :) Not surprisingly it was exactly like the one at home, but surprisingly everything we bought did fit in our little diesel car!

So far the people are pretty nice. It's hard to describe.... although people don't really smile, don't offer help, and really do seem to get cranky if you don't speak French, they still seem to be nice enough and willing to help when asked. Just different from my trips to Ireland, UK, and even France where people seemed much more outgoingly friendly. Hard to know how much of that is because the town we are in is pretty depressed, few jobs, and I am sure they resent so many people not speaking french, and possibly some anti American sentiment? I am interested to see as spring/summer approaches whether more people will be out and about, and what parts of the city "open up".

In the meantime Keith and I are trying to take advantage of some of the things offered at the base. Last week we went and saw a play put on by the SHAPE players. The production was great, customs and sets were fantastic, however the acting and singing could have been better. They have auditions for Grease in mid March. Not sure if I want to do that, but it might be nice to have something where I can interact with people who speak English. If I can't get a part it might be fun to work on the production. We've also seen a couple movies. Pretty basic theater, but nice for getting a chance to do something familiar.

Keith mentioned it before but I am truly amazed by the paperwork debacles. His clearance still hasn't come through, which makes his job very frustrating. We keep getting told any day now, but we just don't know. Dealing with the DMV at home is a joy compared to all the weird steps, and processes we have to deal with here. Most of it is a pain because we aren't military or military civilians. Since Keith is a consultant we have a lot of paperwork to get us both set up at SHAPE but also in the town we are in and of course there doesn't seem to be a consistent way of doing things. It's weird to get bills in another language and just hoping that we are paying them correctly. They don't really do checks so it's primarily online banking, which is cool for us, but difficult in another language.

Now that the house is in order, a lot of the paperwork is started, and the curtains are pretty much done :) we should be breaking out a little more and starting some traveling. Perhaps Bruge this weekend?