Belgium Journal

The Rest

Date: 23 October 2005 Time: 5:03 P.M. EDT

Three items of note from Amsterdam:

• We took a taxi ride at one point, and it felt like Crazy Taxi.
• We watched some people playing on a huge chess board with two-foot-tall plastic chess pieces
• urinoir - a public, open-air urinal

We went to London, rode the eye, took some tour buses. The hilight was a comedy club.
Pictures from the night we arrived in London. One is from a tube station in the London Underground (I think), and the other is a picture of my face in the hotel room.
More pictures of London

Before we left Europe, I got a couple of pictures from Michael's apartment. They show what typical Belgian light switches and toilet flush buttons look like.

Ghent, Beer

Date: 18 October 2005 Time: 9:32 A.M. GMT+1

Yesterday we went to Ghent, walked around a little bit, got smashed (well, I did anyway...Michael has a higher tolerance for alcohol, and Dad didn't drink as much), and ate dinner. See the pictures for the day to see what I drank. It's the tall, TALL glass that needs a wooden scaffold just to stay up. The picture after that one shows how much of it I managed to drink before I decided I didn't want to fall off my stool. The picture before shows my and Michael's shoes in a bucket...the bartender holds shoes for ransom for those tall glasses. When the bartender asked for our shoes I felt a little like John Crighton in Farscape.

We went to an old castle, and I took some pictures of the inside and some of the city from the roof.

Today we're going to Amsterdam.

Darts, Beer, Pool, Beer, Food, Beer

Date: 16 October 2005
Time: 11:41 P.M. GMT+1

Got up this morning around 11:00 A.M. Slept for about 15 hours last night. Watched some Family Guy episodes that Michael has on DVD. Played some darts with him and Dad on Michael's dart board.

We went to the same cafe we ate lunch at yesterday and got beer and cheese. The first glass of beer I had was 9.5% alcohol, and I was drunk before I even finished the glass. We followed that with a lighter beer, and had cheese with them both. Then we walked around Tongeren, saw an old archaeological dig, and stopped in a bar to play pool and have more beer and cheese.

For dinner, we met up with a group of Michael's friends and ate at a steak restaurant that serves all-you-can-eat spare ribs. I had the ribs. (I left my camera in the car, so I don't have any pictures of that.)

I don't feel like organizing the pictures that I took, so for now I'll just group the pictures together by date and link to that directory in the journal entry.

Made It

Date: 15 October 2005
Time: 12:22 P.M. GMT+1

Made it to Belgium with little hassle. I had to kiss my pocket knife goodbye at the airport, since I unthinkingly brought it along. I got that knife as a New Year's Day present in 2000.

The flight was very uncomfortable, despite having a bulkhead seat (plenty of leg room). They left the lights on well into the night, and they left the video screen on even longer. Since I was in the bulkhead seat, the video screen was about four feet from my face. I got very little sleep.

On the ride from the airport to Michael's place, I got to see some cows that were made huge with steroids. They reminded me of the imperial walkers from Empire Strikes Back. Made my mouth water a little bit.

No pictures yet. I just got here and haven't unpacked yet.