Brussels

On to Brussels - The train trip to Brussels was O.K. - but the lugging of the luggage was not.  No one would help us put it on and off the train.  And there isn't anywhere to put the fricken luggage one you get on the train.  Not well thought out.  Anyway...our hotel was attached to the train station which was great.

When we walked in the hotel lobby had a exhibition of tea/coffee cups.  I thought it was pretty neat.

The next day when we went sight seeing Shonda navigated.  Which was good because I am useless when it comes to following a map.

We liked this statue - Shonda said it reminder her of two best friends traveling.  Us.

The park had a lot of statues and features.  This was all before breakfast, which we generally didn't roll out of the hotel to have until about 11:30. The concierge was mortified at the times we took our meals.  I thought we took a picture in the breakfast place he recommended - but I can't find one so I guess not.

We took a day trip to Bruges.  It's a really nice town with canals and old architecture.  But of course my battery died when we arrived and I didn't have my spare.  The only photos I got were of the Cathedral we went to (we even attended a service which was really nice).

I think this is the church organ.  And I got a photo of a fountain in one of the squares.

I still can't believe how good this turned out.  I literally did a point and shoot and, if I do say so myself, it looks awesome.  I need to take some photography courses maybe I could get more like this if a actually knew what I was doing.

The next day the concierge gave us the name of this restaurant for lunch - again he was a bit disgusted with us because we were asking at the ungodly hour of 3:00.  Little did he know that not only was this lunch but it was breakfast too.

And as you can see from both my photo and...

Shonda's the atmosphere, food and drink were very good.  And of course the company was superb.

After eating we were walking around to see some of the sights when we came across this candy store.  They really like their peeing boy statue and replicate it everywhere.

Here is the real one and here is one in the Belgium beer bar we went to:

And here are the Italians in the beer bar that were chatting us up.

None of them spoke English fluently. One of them knew a bit of English and most of them could speak Spanish and some French.  So between our bad Spanish, their bad English and the bit of French we both knew we could communicate.  A little.

Breakfast the next morning - neither one of us was 100% after the wine, brandy, and beer the night before.  But boy did we have fun...

Belgium and the Netherlands

Sammy had a business meeting in Genval Belgium over Thanksgiving, since I've never been to Belgium we decided to take a few extra days and do a little site seeing. We landed in Schiphol Airport on Wednesday evening made our way to Rijswijk where we stayed the night. The next day I went to Delft while Sammy had some business meetings.

Me and Sammy in Schiphol Airport

Delft was really nice, I found a shop that sold handmade wood candle holders and handpainted Delft pottery. The building the store was in was really old, the ceiling had a really nice mural painted on it and according to the shopkeeper the painting was about 300 years old. The shop keeper was very nice, she made coffee and we sat and chatted for about 1/2 hour.

This is a partial photo of the ceiling

After Delft we took the Eurostar to Brussels where we stayed the night and wondered around a bit. I really liked all the small shops that were surrounding the Grand Place. We only stayed in Brussels one night because we were going to Brugge for the weekend to meet one of our friends from London, Samara.

Grand Place, Brussels 

But we had enough time to check out the archeological dig in the old palace poke around in some of the comic book shops. We also browsed around in the cookie, chocolate and Beer shops.

Beer shop

Brugge was a beautiful little town, it has canals and of course a lot of little shops. It was also decorated for Christmas and had a little Christmas market set up in one of the squares. We stayed in a nice place, the Hotel Jan Brito http://www.janbrito.eu/index.php?p=/Eng/welkom

While in Brugge we walked around the shops, checked out the Christmas market and Samara and I went shopping. Sammy being the gentleman he is carried all of the bags.

Shopping in Brugge

Sammy had to leave early to go to his meeting in Genval so Samara and I did a bit more shopping before she left. While we were out and about we found this little coffe shop that served the most incredible hot chocolate that I've ever tasted. The hot chocolate was served in a large cup with hot milk and a tulip of chocolate in the middle which melted right in front of you. They also served up delicious pastries.

Hot Chocolate

After Samara left to go back to London Sunday night I met Sammy in Genval. It's a nice little town with a small lake on which the hotel was located. While Sammy was in his meetings I walked the lake and visited the town. On Tuesday night we left Genval to go back to Amsterdam so we could catch our flight out of town on Wednesday. Unfortunately, when we were in the Brussels train station Sammy's backpack was stolen. Right out from under our feet...literally. One guy distracted us while the other one came behind us and pulled the backpack from under our feet. It was awful because they not only got away with his computer, but they took his passport. So we ended up spending an extra week in Belguim.

Since Sammy has an Indian passport it was even more of an inconvenience than it would have been because of the visas that are stamped into his passport that let us travel at will. We had a trip to Finland booked for Christmas so there was a possiblity that we would have to cancel it because his 2 year Schengen visa would have to be replaced.

Even though we spent a lot of time at the Indian Embassy and Sammy had to work we did get to go to Ghent over the weekend. It's as nice as Brugge and it also had a huge castle in the middle of town. Of course my camera battery was dead and I had left my spare in the hotel room so there are no photos.

But we did go to a Christmas market in Brussels where where I took some video of the old style merry go round.