Carolus Mechelen

... in Europe...or really anywhere, for that matter.

For lunch, we went to Zebra, a recommendation from our book. It was a great find with a great café vibe. The food was fantastic (Croque-monsieurs! Salad! Apple tart! Hot chocolate!). We set off again to find the Mannequin Pis, which was actually pretty anticlimactic; the statue is about a foot and a half tall and overrun with tourists on a random corner of town.
Afterwards, we walked to the museum ...

... to offer from the Saturday market, parks, canals, shops, churches and the great cafes. Since we’ve been here we’ve realized that we rely on cars way more than Europeans. In Belgium there are bike lanes on every street and everyone rides their bike everywhere. At stores, museums etc. there are well used bike racks. Bikes have the right of way and cars are much more aware and cautious of bikers ...

... backpack with laptop, sound card, and mics as a pillow).   The flight to Brussels lasted less than an hour, compared to the 9+ hour transatlantic flight.  The beatboxer who I had come to record, Fatty K, picked me up at the airport with his girlfriend Jasmine and his friend "D."  On the drive to Mechelen, I realized I had forgotten to tell Fatty K what I did for a living (subsequent to my former albeit brief career as a studio session guitarist).  I am always amused by the ...

... by walking through Galeries Saint-Hubert. We then walked to the magnificant central square, Grand Place, and saw the splendid Gothic-style Hotel de Ville. Next we walked to the manneken Pis fountain, a little boy cheerfully taking a leak into a pool. We then walked up to Palais Royal before heading to Palais de Justice which was for many years the world's largest building. We then had some traditional fries & mayounaise with beer. After that we went to the ...

... on our bikes at 9:00. The group rode pretty fast and we saw more of the same scenery - windmills, fields, farms, and animals. we had lunch about 40 minutes before the end in a small town. We reached Thole at about 2pm and boarded the barge. We set sail for Antwerp (and Belgium) and arrived at 6pm after going through the 4th biggest harbour in the world - it was massive and took about an hour to go through it. After tea we went to a ...

... myself "noooo, he's turning the boat, really why isn't he turning the boat, Gosh, it's off with our heads if he doesn't turn around NOW" but when I turned to our captain he shouted "achtung!" and we all ducked into the boat, almost grabbing our feet, and watched the bridge almost scrape the top side of our boat! The river is not exactly "crystal clear" but it has improved in time according to our guide. Back in the day, everybody who lived close to the river was thought to be ...

... and the Gare de Nord train station, which is nice if you ask me). I told the people at the front desk my information and they gave me a number and asked me to sit inside the waiting room until my bus arrived. I did so, especially since it was pretty cold that day (it was around November when I decided to travel to Brussels, so yeah it was starting to get cold). Finally my bus arrived and we got all loaded up. It ...

... I had asked the waiter to bring more bread to sop up the braising jus. As is almost always the case, trying to recapture a memory had fallen short. I'd stopped living in the moment. I'd missed an opportunity to create a new, unique memory. I decided then and there that I would not seek out the restaurant in Paris where I'd sampled those extraordinary mussels. Rather, on my next stop, I vowed to experience as many new things as possible. And to keep on doing just that for the rest of my life.

... coffee shops" which really means "pot shops" and places to smoke whacky tobaccy. It was an interesting experience going into some of the drug shops as it was full of things that we would not even know what they were for!! We got offered heaps of drugs whilst we were walking through the streets but from the warnings in the tourist brochures if you want to buy drugs you should buy them in the "coffee shops" and not off the streets as it is just likely to be washing powder or rat poison ...

... From here we continued onto Bruges. Julie and I both caught a quick nap - Chris took a really funny picture of us both passed out in the backseat so I would encourage you to take a look at their T-Pod to see some of their pictures (their T-Pod user name is "chronometers"). Chris remembered to upload the GPS for Bruges so we had no problem finding our hotel this time. Chris had found us a really nice bed and breakfast (E60/night) called Aaricia. It was actually a 3-bedroom house ...