Brugge

I was so excited about our trip to Brugge today/this evening! Mostly because Brandon and I really enjoyed the movie with Colin Farrell, In Brugge and we've wanted to see the city ever since. It was quite an adventure to get there because we were going to drive the car (by we, I mean Brandon) and it was going to be an hour and a half drive. **The driving here seems so different, but one main difference is that priority is always given to the right. So we'll be driving along and someone can make a right turn directly in front of you without looking! Anyway, Brandon was a little nervous, but very collected and determined. After awhile we got the hang of it, and enjoyed the "motorway" or freeway. It was snowy countryside and pretty to look at.

Brugge is just absolutely gorgeous. It's almost like a smaller version of Venice maybe? There are lots of canals, and bridges that go over the water. The cobblestone streets were very narrow with a lot of different shops, restaurants and chocolatiers. We tried our first Belgian chocolate today and it was great! We just chose a few pieces from the many choices, as we didn't really know what we were looking for.



The buildings and squares here are absolutely GORGEOUS! Some of the famous Brugge buildings kind of look like they are made out of lego's on the top :-)







My Grandma and I in front of the famous bell tower :-)

Paris

Well, our day in Paris could not have been better (maybe longer) but not better! The train ride there was beautiful (snowy fields mostly) and pretty quick (about 1.5 hours) and the first thing we did when we arrived was find lunch. We came across a cute Italian place, and the service was so friendly and the food was amazing. Brandon said they had the best lasagna he's ever had (although we were pretty starving at this point.) We enjoyed the warmth of the restaurant and watched the city from the windows.  Here is a photo I took of the restaurant later that evening before we left.



After lunch, we walked down to the Metro and made our way over to the Louvre. I loved using the Metro, and wish that we had more public transportation options at home. It was so quick, easy and inexpensive. Arriving at the Louvre was amazing! Brandon and I had both seen the outside of it previously, but we were so impressed by the size inside! We only had a few hours and were only able to see one of the three wings. It could have easily taken all day to see the whole thing. I was most excited about the Mona Lisa :-) I've heard that it can be kind of anti-climactic so I pictured it on the smaller size however I thought it was a normal size painting. I wish that we could have gotten closer to it, but they had it roped off. Afterwards, we played in the rain outside by the fountains and the famous glass pyramids :-)

Afterwards, we got back on the Metro and headed towards the Eiffel tower. We found a park right along the Seine River and took a few pictures of the Eiffel tower at night. It was gorgeous outside and it was raining, and then the Eiffel tower started sparkling. It was truly a perfect night!! Here is one of the many cheesy photos we took :-)



Afterward, we had a reallllllly good kebab sandwich from this kebab place and then headed back to the Gare de Nord train station. ALL of the trains were delayed due to the weather! So we didn't end up getting home until almost 1:30 am. We fell fast asleep immediately!!

Snowed in!

Well, we woke to find that it had stormed while we slept and continued to do so all morning and day! Our plan was to take the car downtown and explore but we felt a little nervous about driving a car that isn't ours, in a city we aren't familiar with, and driving rules that are completely different. Plus, we watched quite a few cars struggle to make it up hills because of the slippery streets and figured we would play it safe. The snow was really coming down! It was so nice to lay around in pajamas and watch movies while the snow fell right outside the window :-)

Here, is a picture from the bathroom window...



It stopped snowing aound 4pm and Brandon (who had cabin fever) bundled up and walked to find where our Metro stop was -- we'll be using it to take us to the train station to Paris tomorrow. It's surprisingly warmer today, maybe low 30's as opposed to 19 degrees yesterday. Turns out the Metro is only about a 25 minute walk, which isn't bad if the temperature stays in the 30's! Fingers crossed that it's not too snowy in Paris as we'd like to walk around quite a bit. If it's storming, we'll spend more time in the Louvre and cafes :-)

Well, we just made a great dinner (chicken, potatoes and green beans) and now we're settling in to watch the Charger game in a few hours(Brandon is streaming it online.) He brought his Charger jersey with him because it seems they've been winning since he bought it ;-)



Well hopefully we'll have great stories to tell later about our adventure in Paris tomorrow!

Day Two in the Brussels, Belgium

I figured I would add a few pictures to Brandon's post. These are just a few from walking around the neighborhood yesterday.  Oh and a sign that I thought was an amusing way of indicating a dog park :-)               

                        






Brandon's Words:
Well, jet lag is not our friend, and because of it we didn't wake up until 10. And shoot, we're on vacation, we can wake up when we want. We eventually got ourselves together and went walking in search of lunch and the nearest metro stop. We did battle with the cold (it was 19 degrees), and the cold won. We only made it like a mile and turned around. In our defense, there was no food in sight yet and we just wanted to eat. We thought maybe we could accomplish more in the car. I went out and swept off the snow and ice and warmed it up and then we went in search of nutrition.

The rules for driving in Belgium are much different. They didn't even issue driver's licenses here until the 60s. I think I only got a dirty look once.We didn't have great luck in the car either looking for food, but we did get a sense of the neighborhood. In the end we got a falafel pita from a little Lebanese take out place. It was really good.

While we were in the take out place we came face to face with the language barrier. Amira wanted a sandwich but ended up with a side of hummus cause she was too embarrased to point to the menu. I got lucky and pointed out that I wanted Falafel, which turned out to be a sandwich. I shared. The man who helped us was very kind. But Amira noticed that he was talking to his friend in Arabic about us. One of the phrases she could understand was "ya harram" (sp? we don't really know Arabic either) which means "poor thing." She was a poor thing.

That is all.

--Brandon

We're here!

16 hours, two flights, one layover, 6,000+ miles, one train ride and one taxi ride and we made it!! We arrived to our place in Belgium a few hours ago and it's absolutely beautiful!! Brussels very rarely gets snow, but this year they did! Everything is covered in it and the streets are beautiful in our neighborhood. 



I thought Brittney would love this, but much to our surprise RIGHT next store to our place is an amazing bakery. The cakes and goodies in the windows are gorgeous, and we're told every morning we can smell the bread baking. We stopped by and they gave us a few loaves of warm bread as a welcome :-)

We couldn't wait to explore the house, and man was there a lot to see! There are five stories!! The room we are staying in is on the 5th floor and there is a wooden staircase that leads to an artist's loft.  

View of our room from the artist's loft...



Some of the staircases...

I am very happy to report that there is a little Christmas tree, and they even had one wrapped present for each of us waiting! (For clarification, my Grandma does house exchanges, so we are staying in a Belgian family's house, and they are staying at my grandma's place in CA.)





After exploring the house, we walked to the grocery store around the corner and bought a few things for lunch and now we're trying to keep ourselves awake for a few more hours so we can get used to the time in Belgium. It's 4:00 in the afternoon here (7:00 am California time) and we've been up since 3:30am on Thursday. We're exhausted, but excited to explore the town tomorrow :-)