Belgium.

Well it's Monday again so I thought I'd provide a weekend update. But first, the news of the day... I didn't want to say anything until it was "official" since things change so easily on this project, but now that it's been confirmed, I thought I'd share it with all of you. I will be coming back to the Netherlands in January. I need to be back January 5th to be exact so I'll be flying out on Jan. 4th from the states. As of now, it's only a 2-week stint, but I may extend it a little bit and actually take some vacation days since I currently have 25 in the 'bank.' I'm thinking London, but could be persueded otherwise if any of you will be or want to be in Europe around mid-January. Think about it!! The british pound is not very strong right now which means things are much cheaper there than in previous years. Also, with all my Marriott points, the hotel will probably cost me, well... nothing. Some of my colleagues are considering renting a car and driving through Germany which may be equally as fun. Let me know if anyone has any thoughts on this! And since I'm headed back to the Netherlands in early 2009, I'll most likely be keeping the blog alive so hope you all are still enjoying the updates!

Now, onto the weekend recap...

You know how during the week you can look forward to a weekend of no work, sleeping in, relaxing, and rejuvenation, right? Well my weekend was nothing of the sort. First of all, I worked Saturday, second of all, Sunday night hit and I've never been more tired in my life. So extremely and utterly... exhausted.

So Friday came around and it was a bit of a teaser. It didn't FEEL like Friday since I had to work Saturday, but I ended up going out anyway. ha. Two of my colleagues and I (aka the three Stooges as we are starting to be known as) had plans to hit the one, the only, the hottest club in Amsterdam: JimmyWoo. We had tried before and hadn’t gotten in, but this time, the concierge had made sure we were on the exclusive list. Just to paint the picture, it’s one of those clubs that enjoys it when a bunch of people crowd around the black velvet rope waiting to get let in, only to be turned away for the sake of turning people away. It’s dumb really, but we had heard all about the hype (and especially with both of them being from L.A.), we wanted to see what it was all about. Well we head down to Leidseplein where JimmyWoo is located and lo and behold, we get in. It was a neat club, two levels, great music, lots of people. The club is really neat inside too... lined with hundreds of lightbulbs on the ceiling and walls, and flashing in different patterns. We drank. We danced. We observed the European-ness. It was a good time. We capped off the night with a stop for food at 2am, where we got some delicious kip sharmas, and finally to bed around 3am. Oh a kip sharma is like a pita with chicken inside. I really wasn’t planning on staying out until 3am since it was a work night, but life is about choices, and I was fine with being a bit tired the following day. Plus, the boss had told me that I didn’t need to come in until 10am. I didn't take many pictures at JimmyWoo, but this one illustrates the light-bulb effect that I was talking about:


Saturday morning comes a bit too early and I wake up to gather my belongings and check out. Oh yeah – forgot to mention that we decided to go to Antwerp, Belgium for Saturday night through Sunday. I get my luggage stored away and just bring a small duffle with me to the office so that we can cruise on over to Belgium after work. I decide to start a book on my way over to Amersfoort which I'm sure many of you have red: Eat, Pray, Love. It has been on my bookshelf for quite some time, waiting for me to get into the reading mood which is rare for me since (1) I am a terribly slow reader and (2) who has time to read? Well for whatever reason, I was in the mood to bury myself in a book for the train over and I’m really enjoying it so far. Anyway, fast forward through the work day to the evening where the 3 of us get on a train to Antwerp. It was very last minute since we were on the fence about going up until literally Friday night. I had tried to find a hotel and 99% of the hotel rooms in the city were completely booked and those that weren’t booked, were like $400 euro. The only option was to risk it and book a room at the Hilton for $390 euro, hoping that Super Diamond Platinum status would get us upgraded to a suite or something. My initial reaction to the plan was no, but hey you only live once and it’s only one night so... there I was, on a 2 hour train ride to Antwerp. We arrived that evening at the Hilton and to our dismay, there were no suites available to upgrade us to, but we did get an executive room on the executive floor and a roll-away which meant we all each had our own bed (the European standard of 2 twin beds + a roll-away). We pretty much threw our stuff into the room and bee-lined it for the executive lounge (read: complementary open bar) and were able to enjoy some more benefits of being at the top of the Hilton food chain. The rest of the evening was packed with more drinks, first at a Jazz bar, and then at a club in Antwerp (discotech as they're called in Europe). It was neat because one of my colleagues had two friends that recently moved to Antwerp so we met up with them and they knew where to go. We didn’t have an appropriate dinner so somehow decided to eat Falafels at 3am (which is becoming a trend...), which is like a big pita with vegetarian- how do I explain them.. meat-balls? Except they are vegetarian.

The following day, I, being the morning person that I am, got up around 10am and headed out to see the city. The Hilton is located in the heart of the Centrum so I was literally across the street from the massive Cathedral. It was so beautiful inside and out. I’m talking completely ornate, massive, unbelievable. Around 11am, the KerstMarkt opened, also known as the Christmas Market. It’s basically all these portable houses lined up, selling tons of Belgium food and drinks, clothes, Christmas things, etc. It was definitely fun to people watch too. The guys got up around 1am - in time to get checked out and do some more exploring. It's customary to drink a lot on Sunday so we sampled a few of the Belgium liquers in the market called Jenever. They come in all different flavors, in a little shot glass, and I tried the Amaretto... yum. We stayed pretty close to the Cathedral and all the tourist-y areas, but it was really neat to see everyone out and everything decorated for Christmas. Here are some pics:

Antwerp Cathedral of our Lady: Built between 1352 and 1521 as one of the world's tallest buildings at the time. It is one of the finest gothic buildings in Europe.

The Hilton - located right next to all the Christmas markets

Getting our Jenever shots... a very delicious liqueur. Europeans love to drink.

KerstMarkt

The portable houses with the Cathedral in the background

The beautiful Antwerp Centraal train station, decorated for the season

More pictures to come...

I left Antwerp around 6:15pm, enroute to catch the 7pm train back to Amsterdam so that I could get checked back into the Victoria, and catch up on SLEEP!