bonjour brussels!

and we're backkkk. matt and i had an awesome time in belgium. we visited my friend megan in brussels. she lives in a teeny cute apartment and served us endless amounts of jasmine tea, fresh oj, and beer. beer... what a concept :) i still don't really like it, but some are ok. the first day we got to brussels we went to the cantillon brewery. it was pretty cool. it smelt bad... but we took a tour on our own into 7 different rooms and then we got to taste 2 different beers. they were quite sour. the first one tasted like white grape juice wine....called gueze. and the second was a red beer called kriek. these are types i think, not the actual names. for dinner that nite we went to get mussels and french fries. this is apparently a typical belgium favorite. it was sooooooo delicious. 

                      

  

the second day matt and i walked around.

 

it was freeeeezing in brussels. so windy and snowy. i took a ton of photos... over 200. (all on my facebook) we saw a palace, churches, the parliamentary building, the instrument museum(although it was closing so we didn't actually see it...), a peeing statue. we got a belgian waffle with sugar and chocolate covered strawberries. i now dream of both as a daily snack.... then we went to get a beer at le roy d'espagne and then wandered the streets to find moeder lambic and have some more belgian beer. they were nice and i really liked the interior. 

that nite we went to megan's boyfriend's (jerome) house for christmas eve dinner. it was most enjoyable! when we got there we had some apertifs and champagne. our first course was smoked salmon, capers, and onions with bread, foie gras(goose), and raw oysters. then we had deer meat, mashed potatoes, sweet potato/carrot mash, and grilled stuffed pears. everything was delicious... although i had trouble eating the oysters. (it's the texture) the family were great hosts. there was a secret santa and...we were made to wear santa hats. i took photos almost the whole nite through... fun. 

on christmas day we made a delicious brunch...walked around the town, drank hot wine, and then went to the christmas fair and rode the ferris wheel. we didn't like that too much... frightening. we shared another waffle with powdered sugar. mmm.... then to a bar for some hot wine & beer. 

on sunday we woke up early and drove an hour and a half to brugge with megan and jerome. it was awesome. i'm so glad we did that even though we only had a few hours there. we got some espresso to warm up and then tried to find a boat on the canal to ride, but the water was slightly frozen. it was so sunny out! gorgeous. for lunch we had mussels.... couldn't help ourselves. at 2:30 we headed back to the gare du nord station and got on our 4:30 bus back to prague for 13 1/2 hours.... the foreign police stopped us at 3:30am and we were so freaked out. we are still waiting on our visas... the guy looked through matt's passport and then just looked at my picture... and said nothing. my heart was beating so fast....PHEW. nothing happened. 

back in prague now and very thrilled to head to italy the day after tomorrow. overall great christmas in belgium and it was so nice to hear french speakers for 3 days. :)