HANNAH!

Sorry it's been so long for a post to come up, I've been pretty busy with school and whatnot. I just finished two finals today and have one each of the next three days. Last week Hannah came on Wednesday and we had a great time. She got in late on Wednesday and we went to the Tea Room for a while and closed it down, it was really great to get to talk to her some more. The next day we had class but for our lunch break we went to the hot sandwich place where I hadn't been in a while. We went to cooking class right after Italian and made meatloaf and ravioli and cream and fruit cake. It was delicious and I was stuffed again. We went out at night to the Galeria by our place because we know the bouncer because we work out with him so we got discount cards there. It was fun and we were out til three. We woke up the next day and we went wine tasting with the group. It was fun we got to tour the castle and then taste a couple wines from there. It was where Chianti Classico was started, which was immortalized in Silence of the Lambs. We went out again that night and then had a picnic the next day in the park. We walked Hannah to her train and her short trip was over. It was great to see her and I'm excited to see everyone when I get back.

Amsterdam

We woke up early with aforementioned feelings of unwellness and made our way to the train station. Oz had told me that the tickets from Brussels to Amsterdam would be about 40 Euro, but we got there and the lady told us 75. I freaked out on her and we got it down to 45 with much pleading and begging. We got to Amsterdam after the three hour voyage and went to find our hostel. Our hostel was in the middle of the Red Light Distrcit, which is actually the safest part of Amsterdam with all the police and security cameras. The hostel was a bit sketchy because we had to lock our things in oil drums to keep it safe, needless to say I kept my things on me the whole time. We walked around in all of the very liberal town that is Amsterdam, we went in a coffee shop and also got the best Chinese I have ever eating, called Wok to Walk. We took in the sights and smells of Amsterdam, we went to the Anne Frank House and then went home to take a nap. We got up and went out for a night on the town. Amsterdam is actually one of the cleaner cities I've been to, no really sketchy people or bums as far as I saw. We went to a bar and met some people from Texas and hung out with them. We woke up the next morning and decided to take the free three hour tour that our hostel offered. It was really good and I learned a ton about Amsterdam, not just the sex and drugs part that everyone thinks of. We returned to Brussels and had a few more beers and some more fries then got on the plane and headed back. This was a really relaxing weekend, filled with fun and food.

Brussels

We flew into Brussels on Saturday morning. We had to get up very early for our flight at like 4 or so and walk the 40 minutes to the train station because the buses don't run in Siena at night. We thought that the girls were going to miss the train, but they made it just in time and we got to the airport and settled in like we always do. We flew into Charleroi, which is 40 minutes south of Brussels so we had to buy the ticket to the central station. We got out into the center Brussels and Oz had given me a ton of stuff to do while we are there. We checked into our hostel, which is the coolest one I have ever stayed at. It had a cool lobby and bar downstairs and our room was really nice and I wasn't worried about people taking my stuff like later in the trip. We left here and went exploring, we saw the really big palace and then got into the middle of town and there was a huge parade going on. I don't remember the name offhand but I will when I get back, but it was just like people who dressed in the same theme and made their floats out of papier mache. There were fish and pirates and skeletons and tall people but mainly pirates. We left here and got down the best part of the trip: Eating. We went and got the famous Brussels fries, covered in sauce, I got Samurai sauce which was pretty hot. Then we got a belgian waffle for dessert, it was unreal. We walked around a bunch and then headed out of town to see the Atomium which housed the 1958 World's Fair. It was cool but it was closed by the time we got there. Apparently it has simulations of many European countries in it. It is hard to describe, just check it out online. Then we went back and started to watch the sunset next to the justice palace, but we were all pretty tired from the day and took a nap. We woke up and decided we didn't want to go out but we wanted to sample the famous Belgian beer that we had heard about earlier when we where checking out the Mannekin Pis, which is the symbol of Belgium. It is a tiny statue of a little boy peeing, and was kind of funny. But we went to a place across the street for our first taste of the beer. I had the Gueze, which is a sour beer. It was really good. Well that night John and I went out and bought a bunch of beer each so we could really test all of the different kinds. Apparently they are much higher alcohol content but you can't taste it, because the next morning did not find us very well.