Lake Tahoe

1. My mother and brother at on a night walk
2. Me laying out
3. Sunset over the lake
4. A snowy road
5. Older brothers never change, no matter how old they are.


I finished leading tours at the end of November last year, and didn’t come to Belgium until the middle of January. That left me about 6 plus weeks to hang out in California visiting friends and family. I am from Southern California, or what is sadly more popularly known these days as the OC. However my mother lives in Kings Beach which is located on the northern side of Lake Tahoe. So that is where I spent Christmas, a white Christmas. I have not had a lot of those in my life so I wanted to put some nice photos here. For the record, I prefer my “white” during Christmas to be on a “white” sand beach, but of course I had a nice time visiting my mother and step father

Amsterdam

1. Cynthia and I

2. My favorite "restaurant" where you get deep fried food from a wall.

3. Eva and a canal.

4. What is Eva doing!!!!??

5. What am I doing????!!!

--------------------------------------------------------

This has been added latter to clarify for my mother what "fried food from a wall" is

Febo is like a vending machine I suppose, but on a grander scale. The "cooks" place the fried goodies of this and that in the little slot. There it sits until you put money in and open the little door of said goodies, for your eating pleaseure, although some do not see it as a pleasure. Some locals think that drunk and stoned and homeless Amsterdamers (usually actually foriegners) pee in the little slots. So go for the upper levels and enjoy the fried.

----------------------------------------------------------

Eva and I went up to Amsterdam for the weekend. I have two friends that live there. Chris I know from high school and he has lived there for around 7 years I think. Last year he got married to Melanie who is from the Netherlands, and Eva and I attended the wedding in Baarlo. Also there is Cynthia, who I know from college. She has been living there for 10 years, and speaks Dutch really well now.

I took the train up on Friday, and stayed the night at Chris and Melanie's. Eva drove up on Saturday and we both spent the night at Cynthia's. That night we went out for dinner and drinks in town. There is not so much to report about the trip, just that it was really nice to see old friends. It is great to have the "in the nieghborhood" and be able to pop up to Amsterdam for the weekend. That's one of the great things about living in Europe. Eva and I drove home on Sunday, after looking around the red light district a bit. It is always a good place to people watch and "window shop." I am a little embarassed to admit that we ate at McDonalds on the way home.

Horse

This is a Horse and below that is Me.


This is horse cooking.


















This is me eating horse.


I know it's not a big deal for a lot of the world. But in America we don't eat horse, not on purpose anyway. So for me it was a big deal to eat, although here in Belgium they sell it at all the grocery stores.

The Beautiful South

More Photos from the weekend, see the next post for the story.

1. The four of us having dinner

2. Can you see the pig?

3. There she is

4. Via Ferrata

5. I climbed that, and look, Belgium isn't only flat

The South

1. Eva and I in Dinant

2. The church from the fort

3. Also the church from the fort

4. One of the forts old defenses

5. Part of the WWI display at the fort

We had a great, weekend that just past, with a little misfortune as well. I had not really visited the south of Belgium and so we took the opportunity to do so. Eva’s friend Karla and her boyfriend Dirk recently bought a house in the small Walloon (French speaking part) town of Houyet. The house needs s a lot of work, which they have not started yet. They plan to renovate it and rent it out to groups. Going there we knew not to expect much luxury, as they had not started the renovation project.

On the way there we took a small detour to the town of Dinant, a very charming city on the Maas River, with a large church dominating the view, and a hill top fortress. The town was also home to Adolphe Sax. You might know the instrument he invented that he named after himself, not the Adolphephone. We took the cable car up to the fort and had a tour of it. From the walls of the fort, the view was stunning. It has been many weeks since I have seen anything resembling even a hill, and the curves of the Ardennes were welcome.

Dirk came after work and met the rest of us at a bar in Dinant, and the four of us then drove to their house. There was an extra little building attached to the main house, and that’s where we were to eat and sleep. Karla had a very nice meal planned, and we prepared it, ate and drank, filling ourselves with food and alcohol (not Karla she is pregnant). Then it was time to go to sleep, and we brought some mattresses upstairs, set up our beds and laid down for the night.

The next morning we awoke, and we all felt a little off. When I stood to pee I felt a little dizzy, but chalked it up to too many strong Belgian beers. As soon as we all started to compare notes however, we realized it was more than the alcohol (Karla had it too) and that it must have been the stove. There was a small wood burning stove in the room and it must have been the culprit. We were lucky to have woken up at all because Carbon Monoxide poisoning kills a lot of people every year.

Needless to say we had a slow start to the day, but eventually got up to some fun. Dirk and I went for a bike ride to “the castle” and found a pet pig. Seriously. Well the castle was an old railway station that looked like a castle, and the pig was, well, a pig. Near the castle was a young wild boar only she wasn’t wild. She had some tags in her ears, but was just hanging out alone. She took a fancy to Dirk and I and followed us around as we checked out the castle. When we got on our bikes to ride away, along came pig. I decided to she needed a name, so I called her “Dinner.” Half way back the girls were walking along the path and they saw us, with our new friend.

After that we passed the pig off on some locals and went back to the house for lunch, to pig out ourselves. Next it was on to some rock climbing. We went to an area that had a small “via ferrata” and Dirk and I climbed to the top using his harnesses. Via Ferrata in Italian means Iron road, and is a serious of fixed cables, stemples, ladders, and bridges, set in the stone. Apparently they are all over the Dolmites in Italy, but this was just a small version. The climb took about a half hour and was a lot of fun, but a little scary at times.


So we had a lovley weekend but were very tired by the time we made it home. When we were home, we still weren’t feeling 100 percent though, and decided to go to the hospital. When they heard what had happened, they instantly put us on oxygen. They took blood, and found out in fact, that we had had a small dose of carbon monoxide poison. Luckily though, they found that we were only at the level of a heavy smoker, not that of a a corpse. My level for some reason was a bit higher than Eva. So mild poisioning aside, it was a great weekend venture into the south of Belgium

Damme and Holland

1. Sunbathing in Oudenaarde
2. Church in Damme
3. Another church in Damme
4. Art


About a week ago Eva and I went over to her sister's house for some dinner and a jacuzzi sit. Her sister (Marie) and husband (Lieven) got a jacuzzi a few months ago, and we have been over twice to soak in it. Boy is it nice, especially in this cold weather. But last time we went it actually wasn't so cold. We sat out in the sun for a while on their balcony during the afternoon, and I even took my shirt off.

The next day we went to Damme to get some pancakes. It is a place near where Eva grew up and sometimes she went to the same restaurant for panckaes, when she was a child. I don't usually say no to pancakes, or waffles or fries for that matter. After we left we had a hour and a half to kill before going to visit her grandmother, so we popped over to Holland for the heck of it. We wandered a bit down the main street of Sluis and then retreated back to Belgium

Aalst

More Carnival Photos, see following post.

1. Here comes the Royal Family

2. So Far from.......Greenland.

3. So far from Jamaica.

4. Hey, that's the King.

5. Controversy in Belgium. The Lion represents the region of Flanders (Dutch speaking) and the Cock represents the Region of Wallonia (The French Speakers). And, well you can see what the Lion is doing tothe Cock.

Carnival

1. Colorful participants

2. Ahh the beer

3. Ahh the food

4. The Klan, trying someting new?

5. Lots of Munchkin types in the parade.

You’ve heard of it right? Aalst is what you think of when you think Carnival right? Sure Rio, New Orleans and Venice may be more well known for Carnival, but in Belgium when they think Carnival, they think Aalst. Well I’m not about to give anything up for lent, but when I hear there is a festival only an hour down the road, I want to go. So last Sunday Eva and I got in the car to check out the festivities in Aalst.

I come from Southern California and until now I thought that it (home to Hollywood) was the fake breast capital of the world. Apparently though, it is Aalst. Not the same kind though, but fake breasts none the less. People in the parade as well as revelers in the street came in costume. It seemed as if the most popular costume accessory this year (maybe every year) was fake boobs. Not the silicon variety but the plastic novelty sort that you find in a sex shop or a joke gift shop. Not just the random street partiers were wearing them either, they were part of many costumes that were in the parade. It just makes me think about some Chinese factory somewhere, and that’s all the workers do all day is produce plastic fake boobs. What must they think of western society?

Eva and I had a good time, doing a little bar hoping, eating, watching the parade, eating, looking at the crazies in the street and eating. Did I mention eating? We started with some Oliebollen, little bits of fried dough with powdered sugar, mmm good. Then I had a Bratwurst because someone else was and I couldn’t not have one. Then of course the Belgium staple, some fries. We followed the fries up with more Oliebollen and then to finish things off, well why not some more fries. It was a good day, but needless to say I skipped dinner that night.

I was going to go out that night around midnight, and try to find a TV that was showing the Super Bowl, but didn’t feel up to it when the time came around. To bad, I saw it turned out to be a pretty good game for once.