Welcome in Brussel!!!!!

Okay, I finally have fifteen seconds to sit down and finish something, so here comes the post about Brussels. The title line is something a crazy waiter said to us on our second to last night here. So our flight left at....6.10 in the am. And because it was the night right after Howie's birthday, we got about an hour of sleep before we left. But we did have fun sleepover time with Ryan and Howie...Howie and Jes talked about long distance relationships, pros and cons. Ryan and I discussed Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and Star Wars. Yeah, it's a whole big clan of geeky kids over here. But anyways. On to pictures and the weekend.


This is me and Jes standing outside Leeson with all of our bags at a ridiculous time in the morning. We look dirty and pale and very happy. That, by the way, is my sweater I bought from the Aran Islands and wear at least 3 times a week, because it's so warm. I was struck by this picture, mostly because it's the first picture I've ever seen of myself where I don't really look like a kid. I think I look kind of like a grown up...something about my face. A little unsettling and very thought-provoking. And I need a haircut in a bad way. Oh, and in the taxi on the way there, Erin O'Connor looked at me and said, "Belgium is on the euro, right?" (they are). And I looked back at her and said, "Um, what language do they speak?" (Dutch and French). Just to give you an idea on how much research we didn't do before we went.

So we got into Belgium, and took a bus to the metro station, but we didn't feel like figuring out the metro right then, so we took a taxi out to our hotel and dropped our bags. Turns out the metro ran pretty much right to our hotel, so we went back to the station, bought some tickets and headed back into the centre of the city. Where we found these delectable waffles. Just look at them. A note on public transportation in Belgium...you buy the tickets yourself and you scan them yourself before you get on the metro. Once we realized that, we didn't pay for tickets any more. But look at those waffles!!!!!!! That one in the middle on the front...syrup is dripping gently off it, into a warm and sticky puddle on the ground. So so so so so tasty.

This is Team Belgium with their first waffles. The final waffle count for the weekend was 21...and 3 ice cream cones. We're fat kids.

This is Sint Katelijne, the first cathedral we saw when we got there, and it's big and Gothic and cool.

This is Mannekin Pis, and it's a statue of a little peeing boy. There are two different stories surrounding the legend of the mannekin. One is that Brussles caught on fire, and he peed and put it out, and the other, more likely, story is that a wealthy shopkeeper lost his son in a crowd and he found the boy four or five days later, standing on a street corner, peeing. I'm not sure why this little guy is such a big attraction, but there he is.

The first beers of Belgium. We had them at a respectable time, something like 4.30 in the afternoon. Dan had the white one on the far left, and it's called Steendonk, Erin had the dark one in the middle, called Maredsous #8, and I had the pretty pink one on the end. It's called Kriek, and it's a beer made from cherries. Very tasty. The beer count from the weekend was a little ridiculous, but between the four of us, we managed to try 30 or so different kinds of beer. Belgium was amazing, did I mention that?

Sint Mikel's, another big amazing Gothic cathedral. This was one our landmarks for the weekend, and I'm pretty sure Dan took about 500 pictures of it. The picture doesn't even do justice to the way it stuck out above everything, towering over the streets around it. It's on a hill, sort of, in the middle of town, and it's just fantastic. Let's go inside.

I just took a couple on the inside, because I don't feel so comfortable disrupting people, being touristy while they're trying to pray. And even though I'm not Catholic, I lit a candle and said a prayer for Josh. Because. Let's face it...prayers never hurt anyone.

Here's a random picture of the metro station that we spent a lot of time in. Kind of looks like New York.

This is my shoe. My left shoe. I decided it would be a good idea to write around the bottom edges the countries that my Chucks travel to. I did tack USA on the front of Ireland, and now Scotland is on there too. England is next.

Erin and Dan getting rowdy on the metro. I don't remember why they decided to kill each other. But this is on the way home from our mini pub crawl.

Jes and I are lovers, not fighters.

So the next day we hopped on the train for 3 euro and went to Brugges (say it brooj). And this is a tower covered in ivy. Just chilling in the middle of town. Yeah, architecture in Europe pretty much rocks.

Me on a bridge over the gorgeous canal in Brugges. There were little boats that went by and everything. We had lunch in a garden of an art gallery, with three of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I don't know where the fourth one was. But then we went into the art gallery for a little while and wandered around, basically just explored the city. Had a couple beers and went shopping. I own the most ridiculous ring in the universe. It's roughly the size of a head of lettuce and kind of looks like one. But I love it.

This was just too cool a picture to pass up. The store was called Temple of Beer. And this isn't even half of the shelves on the back wall. That's all that would fit in the picture.

This is a giant cathedral in...where did we go...Gent. That's where this is. After we left Brugges we went to Gent for supper and some more picture taking. We had supper at this place called Old Louie's, and it was owned by some ladies from New Orleans, originally, and they played jazz music and made really good spaghetti. But they charged us for water.

It rained while we were in Gent, so here's the rainbow.

Erin O'Connor got a little cold when it started raining, so I donated my scarf to her, Jes gave up her coat, and she's sporting Dan's hat. Doesn't she look warm?

So the next day...Sunday...we hop on the train again and go to Waterloo, which was really...well, it was actually a little disappointing. You'd think for all that happened there, the museums would be a little bit better. Well, two of them were really cool. The rest were...eh. But before we went up to the monument for the Dutch prince who was wounded in the battle, this lady attacked Jes and painted a bird on her face. She looked pretty hot.

Here's some little model guys doing battle in one of the museums. I cheered for Napolean, but he still lost. Jerk.
Here's the view from the top of Lion Mountain, which is the monument to the Dutch prince I was telling you about. We had lunch there. With the Lion. Rawr.

And there's the lion. It took 226 very steep stairs on a very narrow stairway to get up there. And we all know how I am with vertigo. But I didn't throw up or even get very dizzy on the way down, so go Erin!

Here's Dan taking on Jes and Erin in a pistol duel in the giftshop. Dan claims he won, but I didn't see a clear winner.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get all of this up, but really, my week was two days long last week...I didn't even have time to unpack from Belgium before I was jetting off to Scotland, which I will post about as soon as I get my pictures downloaded.

And again. I am trying to keep you guys updated, but I can't take pictures of us singing Irish songs as we rode the metro home, or how much we laughed, or the way that the cobblestones were slick and dark in the rain or the smell of waffles and fries and mussels all mixed together in the air. That's what it's really about, the friends and the experiences and all of us mashed in one bed and sneaking around the hotel because we're poor college kids. It's fun, and there's definitely a lot of Leeson Love.