Hotel la Heid des Pairs Spa

... that stations often had cheap eateries attached (there had been one at s'-Hertsogenbosch but it was too early) so I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone. When I got to the bike shop, DISASTER! The racks I had seen all over the Netherlands are not suited to my bike, apparently my only option is front panniers which I have considered but abandoned due to the expense. I suspect there must be a way of rigging something up but for now that door was ...

... at 23 euros (I can't keep this up forever) but it was for a good cause. I stowed my bike and headed up to the room. My new roommate was a girl who was doing an Intership in Eindhoven but here for an exam tomorrow. We chatted briefly but I was making a beeline for the shower and she left while I was in there.
I got ready and was out of the door by 530 armed with an intent to remodel my luggage solutions and perhaps grab some food (I still hadn't tried anything Dutch).

During our stay in Spa we had the most scary, horrible, unpleasant experience ever in a restaurant.

The restaurant to avoid is "Le Bouchon Gourmand", the owner does not hesitate to insult customers, lock them into the restaurant if there is a dispute on the bill, and claim more money than is due.

See more on www.bouchon-gourmand.blogspot.com

... nice and made me feel good. Then, when I was cooking some dinner, she came up and gave me a blanket, sheet set, and some tea candles. She also has given Nil a wooden spoon, a strainer, and two dish towels for me. Isn't that sweet??? I thanked her tons and gave her a hug when she left. So now I have a few less items to buy to make my new place feel like home.

Well Nil just got home and she is going to eat a bit of food with Markus and ...

... account
4 THEN go to school and teach a class completely by myself about utopian society
5. then come back and look for a mattress
6. call Nil when I find a mattress so she can help me move it in
7. come back here and pack up my stuff and take some it to the new place.

sometime gotta find time to

1. get signed up for internet so I can write to you all at my new ...

... They told us we were at the highest point in Belgium, which was somewhere in the Nature Park.

We decided to call it a day for the roadbook, and make a detour to just get into Luxembourg for fuel, and to make sure we 'did' all the countries.

Looking back that detour cost us some time, but did mean we visited Luxembourg, even if it was too dark to see it.

lots to say.. where to begin?

On Friday we had a teacher outing to Stolberg. It is a very old city about 20 km from Aachen. We had a great time. The weather was very nice, for a change, haha. We first went out to lunch at a cafe. The food was pretty good, I had salmon and potatoes and salad. The only thing was we had to wait FOREVER (at least an hour) to get our food, and not everyone got their food at the ...

... our walking clothes on for a tour of the town. The hotel owner once again extended his assistance to us and let us keep our riding gear in a back room of the hotel lobby where we could get changed into our gear afterwards. We walked around Bernkastel for a few hours and took in the sights of this cool little town with its small and crooked buildings and of course couldn’t leave town without a ...

... and we managed to find an over-priced meal in the Radisson Hotel. The journey home was a long one and one that neither of us particularly wanted to make. Peter handled it in the manner of a man who has children and is a responsible grown up. I threw a tantrum and stated my unhappiness at all the ugly people in the vicinity. Ever patient, Peter cheered me up and before we knew it we were back at our tent by the busy road and heading into Eupen for something to eat.

... Belgium’s two greatest commodities. After we picked our lunch items from the one-third of the supermarket aisles dedicated to groceries, Amber got side-tracked admiring the second third of the aisles, all dedicated to chocolate, while I went AWOL in the last third of the supermarket, eyeing off all the shelves stocked with beer.

We cycled back the way we came to return once again to The Netherlands ...