Belgium

I am not too good at keeping up with posting!  You know its bad when my husband is telling me to post!  I'm working on it I promise!  Let's back track a little.  Over Columbus Day weekend, I know forever ago, we went to Belgium!  We decided to drive and it only took us about 7 hours, which is less time than Virginia to Massachusetts!  We left Friday morning and dropped the puppy off at the kennel and headed west!  Driving here isn't too bad especially on the autobahn.  While there is no "speed limit" it is recommended that you drive 130 kph, which is somewhere around 82 mph.  The Xterra does fairly well on the autobahn, but I cannot wait to get my new BMW and fly past everyone!  We got to Brussels around 5pm and we checked into our hotel which was right in the center of the city.  There was great shopping and restaurants all around.  We got a great deal on the hotel too.  We booked it online for 75 euro a night and in the hotel it said the rate was 200 euro a night!  Friday night we ended up just going out to dinner at a Belgian restaurant which was incredible!  Shayne had horse which was delicious and I had truffle ravioli.  One of the best parts of Belgium is the beer.  We tried a few different beers at the restaurant.  This trip was great because we parked our car Friday afternoon and didn't get back in it until Monday morning when we left.  We were able to walk around everywhere.  We tried to explore a bit Friday night but it was rainy and cold so we just headed back to the hotel to get a good nights sleep so we could get up early the next morning.  

Saturday morning we woke up and went to the breakfast in the hotel which had your traditional European meats, cheeses, and bread.  One of my favorite things at all European breakfasts is the Nutella!  They always have it.  They obviously share my love of chocolate here. :)  After breakfast we headed out to explore Brussels only to realize that it was pouring rain. :(  But we did not let a little rain stop us from seeing the city!  We went and got an umbrella and began our journey!  With our little hotel map in hand we headed out to see the sights! 

 Our first project was to get an umbrella.  Once we got one of those we were good to go for the day.  We first went to go find the Grand Place.  I believe its the center of the city and it was absolutely gorgeous, even in the rain!

  

 

Shayne is really good at taking panoramic shots :)

In our travels to find an umbrella we visited quite a few souvenir shops and in every one we saw this statue of a little boy holding his "wee-wee".  Even some statues of the little boy with a corkscrew coming out of his "wee-wee".  I had a difficult time at first trying to figure out what this thing was!  Then finally on our map we saw a location called "Mannequin Piss" so we decided to go to it realizing that it must have had something to do with the little boy we kept seeing.  We we arrived at the statue we were surprised to see how small it actually was!  

 The little boy apparently has different clothes for different occasions.  What you can't really see in the picture is that he is peeing so it is actually a fountain.  We've tried to look up the historical significance of this statue but have not been able to find anything besides the fact that it gets stolen all the time.

After we left the little boy we went to find the Royal Palace.  The garden below was right in front of the Palace.  We unfortunately did not have time to go in (or take a picture apparently!) but it was quite pretty and when we visit again it is something we definitely will do!

   

After the palace we decided to get out of the rain for a bit so we went into the ancient art museum which had some pretty incredible pieces of art.  We walked around in there for a while just admiring everything.  One cool thing about the museum is that you could rent an audio device in your own language and key in codes to learn more about the art.

  

 After a quick lunch we headed to our Belgian Beer Tour, which we had both really been looking forward to. German beer is great and all, but we both really enjoy Belgian beer so we were very excited to go on the tour.  The tour first took us to a small, hole in the wall, down a dark alley, bar where we had our first beer.  We were able to choose between blonde, amber, or dark.  I chose a blonde and once everyone started getting their beer our tour guide began explaining things.  He asked me why I chose the blonde and I said "because it's lighter?" to which he replied that in Belgian beer the color has nothing to do with the strength and that I was drinking the highest alcohol content beer out of the 3.  Good little fact to know!  While we were there we also found out that this place served "the best beer in the world".  It is a Trappist beer, which means it is brewed by monks not for profit. Unfortunately we didn't get to try it while we were at the bar, but we later returned to try it.

  

After that bar we trecked to the Cantillon Brewery which is the last functioning brewery in Brussel, and also a 20 minute walk from where we were.  They brew a beer called lambic, which is a sweet fruity beer, one of my favorites!  We got to tour the brewery and sample the lambic.  

  

After the Cantillon we went to one final bar called Moeder Lambic which had over 40 Belgian Beers on tap.  We got to sample 2 more there and learn a little more about Belgian beers.  Unfortunately, its really difficult to  find Belgian beers in Germany, which is weird since we were able to find more of them in the US than we do here!  I guess we'll just need to go to Belgium more often!

That night we were determined to find good mussels because we had seen them advertised everywhere!  We got a great recommendation from our tour guide and headed there for dinner, where we were not disappointed!

   Seafood is something that we both definitely miss about the states!

After dinner we headed back to the bar from the beer tour to try "the best beer in the world".  Now I'm not a huge beer girl so to me it was nothing special.  Shayne really liked it though.

After, we headed back to the Grand Place because we heard there was a light show on the town hall at 10pm.  Unfortunately the light show had just stopped for the end of the season the week before. :(  But we did get to see the beautiful Grand Place all lit up at night!

   

   

The next day we went to Bruge which is on the coast of Belgium.  To start out the day I was determined to have a Belgian Waffle! 

 We found a small breakfast shop.  My waffle had strawberries and nutella on it.  We then got on the train to go to Bruge.

 It was another rainy day in Belgium, but that was not going to stop us!  Bruge is a small touristy town filled with mostly shopping.  

  

One of the best parts about Brussels was the chocolate.  There were chocolate stores every time you turned around and we ate SO much of it because it was incredible!  Bruge was nothing special though.  We walked around for most of the day and went into some shops but they were alot of the same things, souvenirs, lace, chocolate and beer.  We did find this one place that seemed different from the rest.  Half of the store was a deli with meats and cheeses and the other side had little hor'dourves.  We decided to try some so we asked to woman what she recommended.  She asked if we wanted to do a tasting plate so we said sure!  Before we knew it we had a bottle of wine and main courses coming as well!  The hor'dourves were incredible.  There were 4 little pieces.  There was cheese and pumpernickel, eel, lobster, sushi, and they were all incredible!  The main course had 2 different dishes.  I had the fish and Shayne had some sort of bird (she didn't know the name of it in English).   It was by far the best meal we had since arriving in Europe!  It was so incredible.  Then for dessert we had a shot glass filled with creme brule.  It was just perfect!

Monday morning we woke up early to try to beat the traffic, since the don't celebrate Columbus Day in Belgium.  We made the 7 hour trek back to Bavaria.  Brussels was definitely our favorite city we have visited so far and we cannot wait to go back again!

Tschüss!

Oktoberfest and more!

So I've once again neglected my blog.  I apologize profusely!  We have been going nonstop for the past month!  I'm going to update on Oktoberfest and save our trips for another day because there is just too much to write about!

For starters, we went to Oktoberfest on September 17th.  Now I'm sure most of you are saying "Really Sarah, you went to Oktoberfest in September?" but that's when it happens!  We went for the opening day of the 2011 year!  It was definitely an experience!  We woke up at 4am to catch a 5am train.  Unfortunately we were unable to simply roll out of bed and onto the train because we needed to get all ready in our German outfits!  Earlier that week we went to a store to buy my dirndl and Shayne's lederhosen!  It was quite the experience considering I still haven't grasped the European clothing sizes.  I knew I wanted a pink and green dirndl (would you honestly expect anything else from me!) so that helped to narrow down the expansive selection.  I tried on a few and decided on the one that had pockets (obviously).  When I was trying it on the woman at the store told me I "had perfect dirndl body".  Which I obviously took as a compliment!  So we woke up early Saturday morning, got all dressed and headed to the train to meet all our friends.  We went with a group of about 10 people and 1 baby.  The almost 4 hour train was quite long but I was able to have a schoko-croissant (chocolate croissant) which made it all better.  When we arrived in Munich it was already a bustling city!  We got there around 9am and attempted to find a table inside to sit at.  Unfortunately all of those fill up around 7:30am, unless you reserve one (which we are totally doing next year so you all better get your butts here!).  So we got a table outside. 

 
 Beer isn't served until noon on the first day because they need to wait until they tap the first keg after the parade.
 
  We didn't get our first beer until around 12:30 but it was worth the wait!  The beers are much larger than usual and after 2 I decided it was best to stop.  Our table was in between 2 German women and a table of people from Spain so there was lots of singing!  Another table close to us were all Americans so I eventually went to talk to them.  They were all from Providence College (too ironic!) and we decided that we needed to sing a song.  I had already wanted to sing "Sweet Caroline" so we quickly agreed on that and started singing.  So I can officially say that I started a song at Oktoberfest!  After a few beers and more than a few pretzels the dirndl becomes a bit uncomfortable.  There is ABSOLUTELY NO give to those things!  So it made for quite an uncomfortable (and long) ride home.  But it was completely worth it.  We had a great time and it was an awesome experience.  I hope you all are already planning your trip for next year!.
 

It is absolutely incredible to be that these women were carrying 9 beer steins at one time.  I could barely hold my one!