Third time is a charm???

I made another attempt today to go and see the boys choir at Westminster Abbey. If you recall, the first time I went, the boys choir was on summer vacation. Although I checked online to make sure they were singing today, I must not have done a very good job because they apparently have every Wednesday off. Sheesh. Hopefully I'll catch them on my third try...whenever that is.

What? One mussles, two people? We are no snack! We are restaurant! NO! You must leave! *CRASH*

Okay, so finally an update about Belgium. It started off, as every good trip does, with me almost missing it. We had to be at the bus station at 2:30 a.m. to catch the bus to take us to another bus to take us to the airport. The plan was to wake up at 1:30 and be at the bus station in plenty of time, but when my alarm went off, I pressed the snooze button (or what I thought was the snooze button) and didn't wake up until 2:06 a.m. Be proud of me, however, because I was at the bus stop at 2:24 a.m., which included me taking a shower. Phew! We saw our bus about 5 minutes after I got there and it just flew right by us without stopping. So, at that point, we freaked out a little, but another bus came in time to get us to our coach to the airport. (oh...when I saw "we", I mean my friend Andrew and I. I think I mentioned who i was going with in an earlier post, but I figure I'd tell you again just to be safe.)

We flew into an airport that is supposedly "just south" of Brussels, but really takes about 50 minutes to get to by train. (That detail really isn't important except to portray my skepticism of the airport name.) Anyway, we got in and made our way to our first stop: Antwerp. We spent a couple of hours there, checking out the sites and just getting a feel fro the town. Antwerp is a pretty modern town, apparently a fashion mecca, and second in diamonds only to some other town I can't remember. :) The weather was gorgeous, so we also got to sit outside and enjoy a Belgium beer (of which they have more than 700 varieties). The plan was to hang out in Antwerp for a while and then go to Burgge, BUT...we didn't quite ration our time correctly and had to run a good portion of the way to the train station. After going back and forth between thinking we were going to make the train and then miss it, we eventually did make it and made our way to Burgge.

Brugge is now my most favorite city in the whole world. It's a little town-- only 120,000 people-- but it's fantastic. It has all the ambiance of an old medevil central European town, but feels a bit like Italy at the same time because it's a city of canals. Add in the element of fall and the leaves changing, and you can understand why I filled my camera's memory card. We got into town, walked around for a bit, found the hostel and had an amazing dinner there....Andrew continued to comment on how good the ribs were several days after the fact. Then we wandered a little more, found out KU beat K-State, (ROCK CHALK!!) and then hit the sack. (Keep in mind, we had been going since at least 2:30 that morning, and Andrew hadn't slept at all.)

The plan for Sunday was to get up, walk around a bit, head to mass, walk around a bit more, and then head off to Gent. That plan got thrown off because in setting my phone as an alarm, I forgot to adjust for the hour time difference between London and Brugge. We were out the door by 9 a.m. as planned...but that was London time. All ended up being fine...we got some cool pictures of the dense fog that covers Brugge in the morning, went to mass in Flemish (interesting expereince), and then continued with the plan henceforth. I mentioned before that Brugge is a city of canals, and because it wasn't too expensive, we took a boat ride on the canal...probably the best $8 I spent the whole trip. After that we took a brewery tour, walked around in a former convent, and (finally) got the most delicious waffle I've ever had. Its hard to describe the immense joy my tastebuds had from this waffle; it seems the waffle was deep fried rather than made on a griddle, and you could taste the sugar granules in the batter. Plus, we got ones drizzled with chocolate. AMAZING. After realizing it really couldn't get any better in Brugge, we headed out before any of the charm could dissipate.

The next stop was Gent (or Ghent). We spent more time in Brugge than we were planning on, so it was nearly dusk when we arrived. At that point we also weren't sure if we were going to stay there or go on to Brussles for the night, but since it was dark and we JUST made it there, we decided to stay. Gent is also a canal town, so it had some wonderful night shots and some bigger buildings b/c it was about twice the size as Brugge. However, unlike Brugge, it's not a tourist town at all, so it wasn't as "nice" and didn't have as much to do. So..we (again) walked around a bit, and then found the most amazing Thai food I've ever had. (My turn to talk about the food for days.) The plan was to head back to the hostel b/c it was again a long day, but a cute little bar/ pub caught our eye on the way home, so we went in. Both when we entered and left, the people in there applauded, and one of the guys there was playing an accordion. It was delightful. The whole time we were there, Andrew kept saying that he thought everyone in there (which was only about 20 people) knew each other and that maybe we were crashing a private party. I kept saying no, that it was a small town, on Sunday night, and it's probably just a gathering of regulars. Well, turns out he was right...the bar tender told us so as we were leaving. Oops.

Monday morning we went an explored a refurbished medevil castle that was surprisingly able to maintain much of its character (including the smell of the latrine.) We wandered around there for a while, explored a church, ate some delicious fries (Belgians are obsessed with fries as much as waffles, chocolate, and beer) discovered that all the statues around the town had had green rubber balls placed on their noses overnight, and then made our way to Brussles.
Brussels was nice...we were only there a short time, but got to see a fair amount of things. One of the big draws is a statue of this little boy peeing. Yes, peeing, and every stupid tourist shop around town has some sort of commemorative memorabilia so you can take the statue home with you. Weird.

I know this is long, and since there isn't anything too exciting to say about what happened the rest of the trip, I'll leave you here. Of course there are lots of little stories that I can fill in here and there, but I'll wait to tell you in person. Moral of the trip: Belgium is spectacular...go there!

One tired cookie

I'll write more about Belgium later, but suffice it to say that it was a great weekend to one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. To keep you content until I'm able to write about the weekend, here is a link to my pictures. (Know that a lot of them are "artistic" type pictures I tried to take, so while they may seem boring right now, after a little enhancement, they will be amazing. :)).

I don't discriminate agianst any form of carbohydrate.

Off to Belgium for chocolate, beer, and waffles this weekend!

I'll be back with plenty of pictures and stories on Tuesday.

GGRRRRR sports cafe. You are not my friend.

Somehow someone in the Tulsa program got the hook-up with the British Olympic Committee and set up a meeting for people in my program to go and listen to the head legal council of the 2012 Olympics speak. The presentation basically gave us all the background on the different committees/ organizations that are working together to put on the games in London in 2012. This included discussing everything from the Olympians themselves, to copyright infringement/ brand protection, to acquiring the land and getting all the buildings built in time. I know that probably doesn't sound too interesting to all the non-lawyer folk, but for us nerds, it really was. We also got information about how a city puts in a bid to get the Olympics and got to watch a video about the London process. The Olympic spirit is really amazing...I could feel it through all the videos... and I hope that they are able to recreate the spirit from the video when the 2012 actually rolls around. I don't have any pictures b/c 1) there wasn't that much to see (we didn't get to tour anything...just sat and listened to presentations) and 2) we weren't allowed to take pictures of the building where LOCOG is located...it's top secret. SHHHHH.

Tonight, however, was not nearly as fun as the Olympic thing. We FINALLY made it back to the Sports Cafe for wings. But this time, it was awful. No one actually got the flavor of wings they ordered, the service was awful, and the wings were cold. They told people in my group that there were no more bottles of a certain kind of beer to be had anywhere in the building, only to see them bringing more not less than 5 minutes later. The worst part was this: my favorite drink at home is diet coke with a flavor shot of grenadine in it, so I ask for that here. Well, apparently grenadine here is a liquour, and so they not only charged me £1.95 for the coke (keep in mind, that's $4), they charged me for the grenadine as well. And they decided the nice fair price for that shot of what is apparently alcohol (but tasted just like at home) is £3.10. Yes, my one glass of pop cost me $10. I don't think I've been so pissed off...ever. I tried to talk to the manager about it, and well, lets just say I don't have any nice adjectives to describe him. Because of that I had to come home, sit down, and cool off. I'm just now going to bed (12:30 a.m.), when I should have been there an hour ago. GGRRRRR sports cafe. You ar enot my friend.

Show me those pearly whites!

New Photos!!!!

Day Trips (including the latest from Oxford and Blenheim)

Around London (Notting Hill Market and stuff with Kristen)

Everything else should be contained in the "London Photos" link to the left. (I had to start sending you facebook links b/c I ran out of free space in my picassa web album. That means you have to look through multiple albums if you want to see the pictures, but I suppose that's just the way it goes sometimes. :)).

How long does it take to decide where to go for a weekend trip? Us: nearly 12 hours...

I can tell that I am finally feeling settled and comfortable here in London....rather than having to tell myself that the days have been good, they just actually are. A large part of that (I think) is founding a good friend in a girl in my program named Val. Yesterday was her birthday, so we did a bunch of random fun stuff to try and make it special over here. She's been looking for a coat, so we spend the first part of the afternoon doing that (she found one! Woo hoo!). After that, we made our way out to Kew to go and see the botanical gardens there. Unfortunately we got there when there was only an hour left for it to be open, and it cost something like £13 to get in. So, we walked around the town a little bit and then headed back home. The town was absolutely charming...although technically still in London, it felt nothing like the city. There was an inner peace discernible from every corner of the town and I would definitely chose to live in that part of London.

We got back from Kew and Val's roommates had cooked up a tremendous Italian dinner for her. It was spectacular and delicious; a feast for both the eye and the palate. After that cake, and then to a sports bar to watch the Colts/Broncos game. It was just a really great day with really great people and was really a lot of fun.

On our way to Kew, we found out a water main broke outside of our apartment. It actually flooded a bit of the girls' room in the bottom flat, and ultimately caused our water to be shut off. Val's roommates actually made the entire meal w/o running water, substituting bottled water from the store where necessary (which makes the feast all the more impressive). We didn't know when it was going to come back on, so I took my toothbrush to the bar where we watched the game (and went the bathroom about a hundred times...I just didn't know when we were going to have water!). Fortunately it was back on this morning, so no more worries. :)

That's all I have for now except for two things: 1) church yesterday was amazing. I loved it. It was at the simple little church near my house, but they did it up right with an amazing organ, a children's choir, traditional hymns and lots of lovin' for the big guy. 2) My friend Andrew and I are going to Brussels this weekend. I had a minor freak out last night/ this morning realizing that there are only so many weekends left here and I haven't really taken advantage of the travel mecca that London is. So, I had a moment with a spreadsheet and a few search engines to figure out where to go and when, and here we are! Woo hoo to a weekend of chocolate and waffles. :)