Hotel Cammerpoorte Antwerp

... had no hostel and no way to get to Brussels on Friday, but this was when I freaked out a little. Like you would expect, the one time we really needed a chocolate place, we could not find any. So we speed walked back to the Mannequin Pis, and luckily found those chocolatiers open in such a touristy area. I bought an unhealthy amount of chocolate, and later picked up a sweet beer mug as souvenirs.

Continuing our walking tour, we wandered to the Palais ...

... actually swim in the river.

I also found a carnival type thing around Antwerp which was pretty cool. It reminded me of being a kid with all the carnival rides, etc. It looked like this is where all the locals were as I was there on a Sunday afternoon and there were heaps of people here. It was fun to wander around and watch all the people in the area.

The next day I moved on to the Netherlands...

... this frist thing in the morning on Sunday and finally getting back on line- I just thought I should add that it is raining here and will be for the next 3 days!! I guess it is better than snow- now off to Brussels!

... ve heard a kid scream that loud in a long time. After a while you just didn't notice, it became part of the noise of the plane. We arrived to a cold (16 degrees) and rainy Belgium. Not a great first impression but we were still excited about being there. After some difficulty we managed to find our hotel. It's a nice place with a big room and FINALLY a bathtub. I can't wait to have a nice long soak! We ...

... are in fact taken at 2pm, and not 6pm as it looks like in the picture. Once I made it to Buckingham Palace 20 minutes later completely soaked, I took my pictures, and decided that that was enough for me for one day and headed back home. -For the next few days the weather was so cruddy, that it was not worth sacraficing another umbrella on the trek to the city, so I waited a few days until Saturday to make a break for it. Thankfully it was a ...

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... and then date stamp from the machine the amount of zones you are about to travel - except as a tourist you have no idea how many zones equals how many strips and if you don't stamp enough strips then the transport police will fine you 37 euros on the spot - no excuses accepted - even the ignorant tourist excuse does not wash with the transport nazi's. The easiest way to avoid any sort of confusion is to buy an all day ticket - which is ...

... So i phone him and he says 'errrr yeah im not goin, im gonna go to Rotterdam with Amanda and meet you on saturday in Amsterdam'...oooook then. So we meet them in town, say goodbyes and leg it to the station, hungover, running with a big backpack. So anyway.....we miss the train and the next one is in about 2 hours. Brugges was excellent and hopefully we will make it to Amsterdam soon!

... the Patton memorial, we drove to Mardasson (see Pics 35 and 37), a huge 5-pointed star-shaped memorial to the US servicemen lost during the Battle of the Bulge. It was huge and pretty impressive. Inscribed at the top of the memorial are all 48 states (who cares about Hawaii and Alaska anyways). Along the way, we passed many tanks left from the war and some weird marker called the Liberty Road (see Pic 36) that I never did figure out the significance of - although I believe it ...

... and ceremony that goes with that, so we got to see the parade: Here he is in his new outfit that looks like those that the brewer guild members wear: No one is really sure of how the Mannequin Pis statue came to be in Brussels....but the statue certainly is a popular site there. And some how he seemed very fitting on a beer weekend in Brussels. WATERLOO AND BRUGGE After enduring the 2 hour non-tour tour and getting lost again on our way out of ...