Today I planned to go rogue and post about my trip to the Philippines on a medical mission. Here's what happened. It is going to take at least 5 whole minutes to download those pictures onto my computers, and believe it or not, I haven't been able to make that happen yet. In an effort to post almost every day, I am going to talk a bit about a Netherlands excursion with the youngest Lee family, who/whom (help me, Crystal!) we were able to Skype with today.
We had such an awesome time during the week of Christmas when we were in Haarlem with them. They had told us how easy it was to travel between countries there, so we made plans before we arrived to take a day trip to Belgium. I mean, it's a small country, and it was under 3 hours by train, so a couple of days before Christmas, off we went. With limited time and not spending the night, we chose Brussels. After all, it is the capital of the European Union, and from what little I knew about Belgium, my guess was that there would be a lot of culture and excitement packed into that tiny country.
Beer is some kind of a big deal in Belgium. I could have done some internet research and told you that beer was first brewed in Belgium or Germany, but does that really matter? It's beer. Seems like I heard somewhere that ancient Egyptians formulated something similar to beer way back in that day. I can tell you that this is one of the most traditional beer brewing regions in Europe. They brew it, they export it, they consume it -- and there are hundreds of different varieties. It was so overwhelming, I am pretty sure I didn't consume one while I was there. Looking at these pictures, I kind of regret that now.
Then there are the chocolates.... not much I can say about them. Every piece or bite I had was worth every ounce I probably gained. Absolutely delicious! The packaging was as exciting and attractive to me as any part of it. A couple of stores we went into,
I wanted to say, "Do you sell just the box?"
And the most attractive and enticing shops! Two things about that.
1) It's a good deal that we were only there for one day.
2) Whatever we bought, we knew we would have to carry for the remainder of the day.
Carrying makes me cranky. I like to make trips to the car. But we didn't have a car.
This post is going to go on forever...
Well, maybe not. I might resume it tomorrow.
Don't forget my disclaimer!
