Florida Antwerp

... wind dies down, honestly! We have six hours to wait in Heathrow, where we will buy stuff that's either cheaper or more familiar than stuff in Brussels, we will eat something (farewell weight watchers, knew my trousers wouldn't be baggy for long..), probably take the mickey out of English travellers in their football shirts and sit in the lounge and write on the blog.<br><br>Very excited about going to Thailand!!

*Marriott charges a fortune for internet access, so I am posting this late (it is actually April 15). Today we picked up our car and headed out of Amsterdam. We are driving a little Renault Twingo. It is conveniently tiny, but we are not sure how it will stand on to the Autobahn! Our first stop was the Keukenhof gardens outside of Amsterdam. This was ...

... odd. It's 8:10pm, I'm fairly tired after 9 hours of walking, so I dunno if I want dinner tonight. Tomorrow, I'm off to Brughes, Belgium. It's a small town on the coast. Oh, it rained for a good part of today; that makes rain in some form for every day I've been here. P.S. This hotel freakin sucks balls. They don't have free WiFi, OR a free breakfast. My damn hostel had both of those, and cost half the price. Talk about lame ****.

... favorite by far is Leffe. Then we slpit up and just Alain, Helga and a couple other friends of Alain's and I went to a lounge bar that really nice....had a few drinks and went off to the party boat called Nano. It is this huge boat that is turned into a club right there in the Canal in Antwerp. Keep in mind by the time we get there its like 2:30 am....But we all party there until 5 am. It was a wild night but a lot of fun!

I'm feeling quite a bit less homesick now that we've chatted with some Canadians and an Aussie on the train for a while. I've been vainly staring out the window praying to see the communal gardens that remind me of Luke. There was hope for a while but all the scenery seems to have changed. Apparently we're almost back to Bruxelles-Midi. Ooh! A woman in front of me, obviously British ...

Hi Everyone! Here's an update on my week in London.... Where to start......each day started off with me having the urge to yell "Aunite Em, Auntie Em!" (Wizard of Oz Reference for those who didn't catch on). This week was one of the windiest weeks I have every experienced, whether it was on Wednesday in the city when my umbrella was torn to shreds by the strong winds in Green's park, or Thursday morning when I went for a jog and while waiting at ...

So I'm stranded in Brussels for two days by myself - - the Russian visa service I used in L.A. mixed up the dates on my entry, so I can't show up now until Tuesday. In the meantime, I'm rollin' solo here in Belgium. I wasted half the day at the airport, then making my way back to my hotel. Things improved when I went down to the city center to catch some more World Cup football, this ...

... to be even though they are less than an hour from each other. For example the people in Antwerp have a crazy dialect compared to the people of Brugge and I am told that if a foreigner learns Flemish from one particular city, they wouldn't be able to understand what the other people are saying. The Belgians from the east speak a mixture of Dutch and German and the people of the south speak Dutch with French mixed together and the north speaks more pure Dutch ...

... full of swearing, sex, drugs and violence; follow-up of Trainspotting. Stories range from worthless over mildly interesting to rather intruiging, but never genius. Still very entertaining though. The Secret Sharer & Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. Two brilliant short stories, though you'd need a dictionary to understand all the big words. Maybe Conrad used one, English being his third language. Still two magnificent and captivating stories; they truly ...

... in a car outside of the train station, it looked awfully shady. But the deal was legit and it went down. While Chris was negotiating, Julie and I walked around the diamond district - oh boy! The night before, the Belgian guys at the Kulminator told us not to buy from the "Palestinians" outside of the train station but a few blocks away where the Jews are. It's amazing that the Jews and Palestinians can't stand each other in the Middle East so much so that they destroy one another ...