Belgium Photos

Zinneke Pis - Dog pissing statue (Like I said they really like their peeing statues)



WAFFLES!!!!!!!!



Waffle Truck (It's their version of an ice cream truck)



Waffles!!!



Ste Katerijne Church



Rue des Bouchers



Rue des Bouchers



Place des Martyrs



Place du Luxembourg - headquarters for the European Union



Parc Petit Sablon - the statues of men of different professions



Parc Petit Sablon - these are the two guys who got beheaded



Parlement Europeen - Headquarters for the European Union



Palais Royal - The Royal Palace



The 'Museum District'



Park next to Mont des Arts



Monts des Arts - The glass cube that serves no purpose



Mannequin Pis - Little boy pissing dressed up in his Polish garbs - Group photo



Mannequin Pis - Little boy pissing dressed up in his Polish garbs



Mannequin Pis - Little boy pissing fountain



Mannequin Pis - Little boy pissing fountain



La Bourse building



Jeanneke Pis - The little girl pissing fountain



Drinking at O'Reilly's Irish Pub with my two french roommates and dutch roommate



Grand Place



Grand Place



Grand Place



Grand Place



Grand Place



Grand Place



Grand Place



Hotel de Ville in Grand Place



Entrance to Galleries St Hubert



Inside Galleries St Hubert



Chinese Tea Room



I forgot to take a picture of my first Belgian waffle before I ate it, so this is the after shot



Cool clock located across from the Mont des Arts



Chocolate fondue fountain. Yum!



Chocolaterie in Galleries St. Hubert



Crypt of the Cathedral in the basement



Picture of what the old foundations looked like when they were doing the excavations




Inside the Cathedral



First glimpse of the Cathedral



Beer Planet...need I say more?!?

Bruxelles, Belgium

Friday February 12th
I woke up at 6am in order to get ready, finish packing and trudge my way through the snow to the train station on the opposite side of town. While walking to the train station I couldn't help but to think that maybe I'd made a mistake by choosing to take my cloth all-star converse sneakers with me, instead of my warmer, more weather appropriate adidas tennis shoes. Considering I was heading further north where it would probably be colder and with more snow, but oh well, too late to change my mind now. My train from Poitiers to Lille was twenty minutes late due to the snowy weather, so I was afraid I was going to miss my connecting train from Lille to Bruxelles, but no worries that train was delayed twenty minutes too. I arrived in Bruxelles around 2:30pm and was greeted by sunshine as I made my way to my hostel to drop off my bag, before heading out to take in the sites. My first stop of the day was "Mannequin Pis" which is a fountain of a little boy pissing (interesting fact: in 2007 he didn't piss for one day as a warning for prostrate cancer). It's the national symbol for the country, but was smaller than I'd been expecting. In basically every chocolate shops you can buy little "Mannequin Pis" chocolate statues. After visiting the pissing statue I started making my way toward the "Grand Place" which is Bruxelles most magnificent square. Along the way I jumped in and out of souvenir shops, chocolate shops and drooled over the waffles that were topped with chocolate, whip cream and all kinds of fruits. When I finally reached Grand Place, I was in awe. The architecture was amazing. Buildings were decorated with intricate statues and symbols and gold. The "Hotel de Ville" (city hall) had the classic gothic architecture going on with tons of little statues and the guildhalls were decked out in gold and statues. From there I continued wandering aimlessly taking in the town. All the streets are made of cobblestone and all the stores are packed with either souvenirs, chocolate or beer (and lots of times all three). Occasionally there would be a clothing store, but they were all tacky and cheap (I hear Antwerp is the town to visit in Belgium if you want good fashion and shopping). I came across the "Galleries St. Hubert" while wandering. It's a strip mall under a glass ceiling. Since it's closed-in it's suppose to help fight against the cold and weather, but it doesn't. It was just as cold walking inside as outside. The galleries connect into a street called "Rue des Bouchers" which is packed with restaurants. Because there are so many restaurants located in one area and not enough customers to fill them all, the waiters (very aggressively) stand outside the restuarant and try to talk to you and get you to eat in their restaurant. Its like walking through a gauntlet. I had actually considered grabbing something to eat there, until I was bombarded by overly-aggressive waiters. So instead I visited the tourist office and then found a little cafe and had some soup for dinner, while I plotted out what I'd do the following day and then I started heading back to the hostel. I jumped into Madeleine Church on my way back to the hostel. It looks really pretty from the outside, but the inside was very plain and dull (and mass was in session) so I didn't stay long. At the hostel I met two of my roommates. Two french girls who study near Paris. They invited me to join them for the evening (dinner and drinks), but I politely refused stating that I'd prefer to go out Saturday night and not Friday (hey, I'm on a budget, I can't afford to go out every night). So I enjoyed my first Belgium beer "Barbar" in Belgium at the hostel bar alone while I continued to read and take notes on my book Utopia by Thomas More (this book takes forever to read. It's so dense I have to reread everything and the man has never heard of paragraphs). After that I turned in for the night, so I'd be fresh and ready to go the following morning.

Saturday February 13th
Upon waking up I continued to talk with the two french girls (in french all the time, of course) and we went to breakfast in the hostel together (the hostel breakfast was actually pretty impressive, usually its just toast and jam but here there were different types of toppings for the toast, two types of cereal, fruit and a large selection of breakfast beverages) and they invited me to spend the day site seeing with them. I was a bit hesitant at first because I actually like traveling alone because I get to see what I want and at my own pace and I was worried about speaking my imperfect french all day with two native speakers, but I decided to go with them anyways. At 10am we left the hostel and headed to an antique open-air market near a park called "Place du Petit Sablon". Antique markets aren't really my thing, but the park was cool. It was surrounded by 48 little statues of men depicting old professions and in the center of the park was a large fountain with two statues of two men who were beheaded for protesting against the catholic oppression by the Spanish Duke of Alba 440 years ago. From there we visited the "Palais du Justice" (courthouse)which was just humongous and way over the top. The Copula is made of gold and it was the second largest (after the Copula in Vatican City) when it was built. The palais sits on a hill over looking the city, so it gives some great views of the town. Next to the palais is a glass elevator that takes you down the mountain, so we jumped in that and headed to our next destination a large flea market located a "Place de Jeu de Balle", like I said I'm not a big fan of flea markets so we had a quick look around and then started heading back into town (we were in the Southwest corner of the city). It was getting extremely cold and starting to snow, so we jumped into a "bio market" (organic food market) to warm up before finishing the trek into town. The Mannequin Pis was the first stop once we'd arrived back in the center of town. Every Saturday the city dresses the Mannequin Pis in the traditional clothing of a different country (this Saturday it was Poland) so we checked it out, snapped some pictures and then began hitting up Chocolateries (chocolate stores). The girls were leaving the following day and wanted to bring chocolate back with them, so I think we visited almost every chocolate store in the city. Which wasn't bad, because lots of them give out free samples or have chocolate fondue fountains that you can dip things in and some having viewing areas where you can watch the chocolate being made. So it was really amusing and tasty visiting them all. During our chocolate hunt we took a break and had lunch in a sandwich shop and then we went to a waffle shop for dessert, where I tasted my first belgian waffle covered in hot fudge and powdered sugar. Yummmmm!! After the girls had finished picking out all their chocolates, they showed me the girl Mannequin Pis named Jeanneke Pis. Yes, it's a statue of a little girl squatting to pee. Then we began wandering to a few other sites like the Opera House, Beer Planet, Passage du Nord (which is similar to Galleries St Hubert, because it's also a covered strip mall but it's walls are lined with statues), then we walked along "Nieuwstraat" street (which was lined with all my favorite shopping stores like H&M, Zara, Pimkie, Promod, etc.) until we reached "Place des Martyrs", then we continued walking toward the Cathedral (on our way to the Cathedral we took a street called "Rue des Comedians" which had some very shall we say 'original' architecture, that is probably hit or miss with a lot of people, but I liked it!). Inside the Cathedral we each paid an euro in order to enter under the church and see the old foundations. After we'd finished looking around in the Cathedral we headed back into the center of town (the cathedral is in the Northeast corner of the city, the exact opposite of where we'd been that morning visting the flea market...we did a lot of walking...helps to burn off all that chocolate and waffles we ate) to visit "Mont des Arts" which is basically a large glass cube you can walk into, but doesn't actually serve any purpose. More cool was the large clock built into the entire side of a wall of a building opposite the Mont des Arts. From there we headed to what I like to call the 'Museum District' because there are museums everywhere, but its also where the "Palais Royal" (Royal Palace) and "Parc de Bruxelles" is located. So we walked by those before making our way back to the hostel and hitting up a grocery store on our way to buy some food and drink for an 'aperitif' at the hostel. After our aperitif we headed out to the bars. The first bar we visited was near our hostel and located in a basement. It had a neat ambiance because it reminded me of an old medieval prison. Then we headed to an Irish bar called "O'Reilly's" across from "la Bourse" (the stockmarket/wallstreet of Belgium), where we met up with our other roommate who was from the Netherlands. We were originally going to go to a concert at a different bar, but when we arrived at that bar we were there less than two minutes before we all mutually agreed that the music sucked and was some of the worst we'd ever heard and walked out (it was some chick spinning horrible remixes of horrible songs). So we passed our evening at the Irish pub and then hit up a kebab shop on our way back to hostel around 3am.

Sunday February 14th
First stop of the day was the train station (located in the southwest corner of the town), which for some reason I decided to walk to, even though it was snowy and extremely cold. I needed to pick up my ticket for my train to Luxembourg the following day. Then I jumped on the metro back into town. The weather was really crappy on my last day. It was snowing all day and extremely cold so by the end of the day my pants and shoes were soaking wet and I was freezing, but I've never let the weather stop me before. Once in town I stopped for some soup to warm up and planned where I was going to go for the day. I decided to trek to the northern part of the city walking by "la Bourse" and the statue of the dog pissing called "Zinneke Pis" (they really like their pissing statues/fountains here). Then I headed to "St. Katerijne Church" where they were preparing for Ash Wednesday, before taking an elevator to the 10th level of a parking structure in order to get a panoramic view of the city. Unfortunately, because of all the snow my view ended up not being as great as I'd been hoping for. After that I walked to the Southern tip of town to visit "Place du Luxembourg" and "Parlement Europeen" (European parliament), this is where the European Union headquarters are located. I walked around this area for a while, but the cold and snow finally were getting to me so I caught a metro back to my hostel and called it a day.

Monday February 15th
Woke up at 6am and made my way to the train station in order to catch my 7:30am train to Luxembourg. My hostel was awesome and had packed me a to-go breakfast so I enjoyed that on the train ride. There was a young woman sharing the compartment with me and she had a cat in a basket that you could tell she was way to close to (she's definitely going to be the old lady with lots of cats in the future). I spent most of the trip staring out the window and watching the snow covered country fly by, until I arrived in Luxembourg City at 10:30am...to be continued in the next post 'Luxembourg'...

February Vacation Itinerary

Friday February 12th
Train:
Depart Montmorillon at 7:50am
Arrive Poitiers at 8:34am
Train:
Depart Poitiers at 9:36am
Arrive Lille at 1:06pm
Depart Lille at 1:40pm
Arrive Brussels at 2:14pm
Hostel:
Hosteling International Youth Hostel
Jeugdherberg "Bruegel"
Heilige Geeststraat 2
B-1000 Brussel
Tel: (+32) 2 511 04 36
Email: brussel@vjh.be

Saturday February 13th
Hostel:
Hosteling International Youth Hostel
Jeugdherberg "Bruegel"
Heilige Geeststraat 2
B-1000 Brussel
Tel: (+32) 2 511 04 36
Email: brussel@vjh.be

Sunday February 14th
Hostel:
Hosteling International Youth Hostel
Jeugdherberg "Bruegel"
Heilige Geeststraat 2
B-1000 Brussel
Tel: (+32) 2 511 04 36
Email: brussel@vjh.be

Monday February 15th
Train:
Depart Brussel at 7:33am
Arrive Luxembourg at 10:36am
Hostel:
Luxembourg City Hostel
2 Rue du Fort Olisy
Tel: +35 222 68 89 20
Email: luxembourg@youthhostel.lu

Tuesday February 16th
Hostel:
Luxembourg City Hostel
2 Rue du Fort Olisy
Tel: +35 222 68 89 20
Email: luxembourg@youthhostel.lu

Wednesday February 17th
Train:
Depart Luxembourg at 10:00am
Arrive Metz Ville at 10:36am
Depart Metz Ville at 11:31am
Arrive Basel at 2:20pm
I will be staying at my friend Celine's house while in Basel, Switzerland.

Thursday February 18th
I will be staying at my friend Celine's house while in Basel, Switzerland.

Friday February 19th
I will be staying at my friend Celine's house while in Basel, Switzerland.

Saturday February 20th
Train:
Depart Basel at 2:17pm
Arrive Strasbourg at 3:40pm
Depart Strasbourg at 4:15pm
Arrive Paris at 6:34pm
Depart Paris at 7:50pm
Arrive Poitiers at 9:18pm
I will either be staying the night at a professors house or she will be driving me back to Montmorillon. There are no trains that run that late to Montmorillon.

*I'll have my cell phone with me during all the vacation if you need to get a hold of me.

January 2010 pics

Drinking at Le Buvard in Montmorillon with our new friends



Drinking at Le Buvard in Montmorillon with our new friends



Drinking at Le Buvard in Montmorillon with our new friends



Drinking at Le Buvard in Montmorillon with our new friends



Drinking at Le Buvard in Montmorillon with our new friends



Drinking at Kennedy's Irish Pub in Angouleme



House party at the Boys' in Angouleme.



House party at the Boys' in Angouleme. Caroline, Leidy and me



Drinking at Kennedy's Irish Pub in Angouleme



Dancing at La Moon in Angouleme



Drinking at Kennedy's Irish Pub in Angouleme



Drinking at Kennedy's Irish Pub in Angouleme

January 2010

Sorry about not updating more regularly. Thankfully I keep a journal so I don't forget anything and you don't miss out on anything.

January 4th-10
My first week back from Spain, I was sick and tired so I basically just laid around trying to get better. I think all my traveling and partying across Spain had finally caught up to me. It snowed Monday night (January 4th) so all my classes were canceled for the week, so I basically had another week of vacation, which worked out great for me because it gave me time to lay around and get healthy again. It actually snowed a couple of times during the week, which is why my classes kept on getting canceled. I got to love the french for their inabilities to deal with even the littlest sprinkling of snow. The reason France shuts down when it snows is because it usually only snows once every 5 to 6 years and only a light sprinkle that melts off in two days, so they never bother to buy snow plows and salt. This year has been a weather anomaly with it snowing multiple times and lasting for more then a couple of days. I'm beginning to think global warming is a myth ;) During the first weekend back (January 8th-10th) Leidy had a Colombian friend who's living in the south of France (along the French/Spain border) come to visit. Unfortunately, since I was sick I didn't really get to do anything with them, but they did cook up an awesome Colombian dinner for me one night.

January 11th-14th
Monday night Leidy and me went to the local cinema and watched a french comedy with Dany Boone called "Micmacs A Tire-Larigot". I'm really not that big of a fan of french films, in fact Leidy flat out refuses to go and watch anymore, because we never enjoy them. This one was suppose to be a comedy, but honestly it was rather depressing and really strange. On Tuesday I started Spanish lessons with Leidy. So I'm hoping my Spanish will be pretty good by the time I head to Spain with Dad in April. We had a new roommate move in on Thursday. He's only going to be staying on Thursday nights (like our other roommate that we never see) and he has a car so he always drives us to the good/big grocery store on the other side of town to do our shopping. He's the sports teacher here at the school. For his first night in the apartment we cooked him a dinner (its not very often that we get to host people for dinner) and got to know him.

January 15th-17th - Weekend trip to Angouleme
Friday afternoon Leidy, Caroline (a Colombian friend of Leidy's who works as an assistant just north of Poitiers) and me went to Angouleme. Normally I take the train but this time we tried out a thing called "Co-voiturage" which is basically like couchsurfing, but with cars. Its a website to find someone that's headed to the same town as you and you catch a ride with them. Its a lot cheaper than the train and you get to make new friends. Friday night their was a house party at the boys' place so we all hungout there. I turned in around 2am (that's early in Europe) and headed to Michaele's house where I was staying for the weekend. Saturday morning Michaele and me spent the morning gossiping and catching up, before I headed into town to meet up with the other girls for a bit of shopping. Unfortunately I was the only one in the group that actually likes shopping, so it wasn't that enjoyable :( In the evening I met up with a friend from last year named Brittney and her husband Alex at a new bar that just opened up in Angouleme. We had a few drinks and caught up, before they retired for the night and I met back up with Leidy and Caroline. We were suppose to go to the boys' house to meet up with everyone, but we decided to head out to Kennedy's Irish Pub instead. About 30 minutes after we arrived at the bar, everyone from the boys' house (~15 people) decided to join us. I guess the party just follows me where ever I go :P We all stayed at the bar until it closed at 2am. Fortunately the owner of the bar loves me, so I asked her if she could call over to the club "La Moon" to get us all in for free. She made the call and the huge group headed to the club (normally the guys don't go out to the clubs with us because they don't want to pay to get in, but I worked my magic and everyone got in for free so we were a huge possy). Our numbers slowly started to dwindle around 3:30am, but Leidy, Caroline, Roman, Benoit and me kept dancing until the club closed a little after 5am. We returned to the boys' house but didn't sleep. We ended up staying up even later playing a "word association" game in french (its where someone says a word and you have to find a word that is similar, but not to closely related for example: if I say 'church', the next person might say 'religion' and the following person says 'crusades'). Anyways, it was a very long night like usual in Angouleme (ha! and I had originally planned on turning in early Saturday night) ;P Sunday morning we woke early (surprisingly enough) and Nalleli, Roman and I headed into town to find an open boulangerie (bakery) to buy croissants and pastries for breakfast for everyone. After our communal breakfast, Nalleli, Leidy, Caroline and me headed to Misty's house to visit and catch up before meeting up with our "co-voiturage" driver, who drove us back to Poitiers, thus ending our enjoyable weekend in Angouleme.

January 18th-24th
Monday was spent in Chauvigny like usual. Eric, the science teacher who drives us back and forth between the towns on Monday, has decided to have me give english lessons to his little daughter. So I'll be making a little extra money on the side tutoring. In the evening I was struck with a "bonne idee" (a good idea). When we'd driven from Spain to France we had stopped at the border and loaded up with cheap alcohol, which we had yet to consume. So around 11pm I was extremely bored and offered a glass of vodka and orange juice to Leidy. Pretty soon our "one glass" turned into one liter of Vodka. We stayed up all night drinking until 5:30am just chatting, watching YouTube videos, trying to learn the dance to the Thriller music video, etc (basically just being silly drunks). Unfortunately the next day my "bonne idee" didn't seem so great anymore. Leidy had class at 8:30am and ended up going to class with only 2.5 hours of sleep and still completely intoxicated. Fortunately my first and only class of the day wasn't until 4pm, but it still wasn't a very pleasant class since I was hungover and not feeling that awesome (I ended up releasing the kids 10 minutes early so I could return home and recuperate). Thursday there was a STRIKE in the schools so my classes were canceled! Leidy and me decided to go into Poitiers for the day and do some massive "Soldes" shopping. The "Soldes" are the time of year when all of France goes on SALE because they are trying to get rid of all of last years/seasons designs/collections. I don't think Leidy realized what she had volunteered herself to go through when agreed to go shopping with me (which is why my friends in Angouleme refuse to go with me, because they know I'm a hardcore shopaholic and they aren't that into it). First we hit up every store and I mean EVERY store just looking at what they had and prices, then we returned to the stores where I'd found things that I liked and tried everything on. Leidy had never seen anything like it as I walked into a changing room with 20 articles and end up leaving with half of them (she thought she'd bought a lot when she'd only purchased 3 little things and a pair of boots, I dropped around 200 euros!). We literally shopped all day from when the stores opened at 10:30am until around 6pm. After I finished shopping we met up with a couple of assistants who work in Poitiers for a coffee before heading to the train station to catch a ride back to Montmorillon. Ahhh, its amazing how a much better a little "retail therapy" can make you feel. Friday morning I ended up having a new group of students in my 2nde class (that's about the equivalent to juniors in high school). The are really great and actually try to speak in english, so I really like the new group, except there are a few students in it that are always hitting on me which is not only embarrassing, but extremely uncomfortable. Leidy was suppose to be heading to the south of France to see a friend and go skiing for the weekend but she was not feeling well so she ended up staying the weekend in Montmorillon with me. Saturday I hungout at the apartment cooking all day (shrimp, yum!) and in the evening Leidy and me went to our favorite bar here called "Le Buvard" to watch a live pop/rock band play. I randomly started talking to some french people at the bar and they invited us to go drink at their table with them. Yeah!! We finally made some french friends in Montmorillon!! We're all planning on getting together after the vacation and going to a club together. So I'm looking forward to hanging out with some new people. Sunday was spent cooking again. Beef egg drop soup: Success!

January 25th-31st
Monday I worked in Chauvigny like usual. One of the english teachers asked if I'd be willing to work more than my contract of 3 hours if they paid me more, I said "OF COURSE!" Tuesday my class was canceled because they were having a test, so I started a thorough cleaning and reorganizing of my room. Wednesday Leidy and me visited the 'Salon de The' (The Tearoom) for some tea and cake in the afternoon after my classes (we hadn't visited since before Christmas break and we were starting to have withdrawls). In the evening I made fish for dinner, yet another success in cooking. Thursday I made egg drop soup: success (did I mention that I've been doing lots of cooking lately?). Our new roommate took us shopping and then made us supper, which was very nice of him. Since he's the sports teacher he's offering to let us take a woman's self defense class that he's teaching in the evenings and he's also set up a workout machine in the living room for us. Yes! During the weekend Leidy left to go to Angouleme to see the Bande Dessinee, which is a huge comic book convention. I went last year and decided I'd rather stay in Montmorillon for the weekend, since I'll be in Angouleme next weekend to see Pamela and Celine who are flying in from Scotland and Switzerland to see us all. I didn't do much over the weekend except organize everything for my trip to Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Other than that, just a lot of cooking :)

I'll try to write again soon. Loveya! xxx