Belgium

Most of our time in Belgium seemed to be spent in the bar. Belgium has so many differents beers that are way better than what you would find in Canada. Most of the bars there carried over 200 types of beer. Delirium had over 2000, unfortunately we didn't get around to trying them all. We did however get to try Westvleteren 12, which has been rated the #1 beer in the world. It has and extremely high alcohol percentage, but all I could taste was deliciousness, thats right deliciousness. Its really hard to judge what the best beer I've ever had was, especially when I tried so many in Belgium. I think it might be my favourite, but my judgement might have been swayed by its reputation.

It was quite a trek to get to the Abby which is supposed to be the only place that Westvleteren sold. We had to take a bus to get there, a bus which we had to call in advance or else it would not come. The time for our bus departure was 11:37am, and the earliest train arrival was 11:20am, in theory it should have been easy to catch the bus. Unfortunately our train was about 11 minutes late, leaving us about 6 mins to run all the way to the bus stop, I would say it was easily over a kilometer. So we had to sprint the entire way or else we would have missed our chance to taste the best beer in the world!! We just made it, I also made the mistake of eating something just before our train arrived. It was a bad idea, I did manage to keep it down which help with really enjoying the beer. We each had 3 of the beers, although it didnt taste like it was 12%, it was, and it made for a nice nap on the train ride back.

Another great thing about Belgium is the chocolate, I didnt have as much as I should have. Every bite was the best bite of chocolate I've ever had. Maybe a bit of an exageration but it was good. Too bad it was so expensive. I had to try really hard to pace myself while eating them.

Something I found interesting in Belgium was that they had 3 official languages. It was very hard to tell which one was spoken where. French was one of them, so I in general stuck to that. They also spoke German and Flemish. I could not tell the difference between the two. It seemed like in the same regions all 3 of the languages were spoken though, not like in Canada where (most of the time) French is in Quebec and English everywhere else.

Parlez-Vous Anglais?

Like in Spain where I seemed learn more about Americans than the Spanish, in France I learned more about Canadians than the French. We went to Vimy Ridge and to Juno Beach, both of which have much Canadian history. Unfortunately at Juno we didn't get to take a tour, by the time we arrived there we had missed the last one. We did however get to go around the museum and learn lots about Canadians and there imput in World War II. After going through the museum I was even more proud to be Canadian than I already was. Vimy Ridge gave me a Similar feeling except this time it was about WWI. We were able to get a Tour at Vimy, which was guided by Canadians. Our particular tour guide even knew some people we knew from Milton. Small world. It was great because the tour was free and they were very informative, they seemed to go out of there way to teach us whatever we wanted to know. At first it was hard to understand why Vimy ridge was such a strategic position, while walking up the hill it seemed to barely have an incline. Once we got to the top we realised that it wasn't actually such a strong position for the Germans to have, just very weak for them not to have. The memorial was huge and impressive, with names of 11285 people who were never found and therefor have no grave. I was really glad we went there, we learned and got to pay respects so close to Rememberance Day.

As for the rest our our France time, we did hit the usual suspects; Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. We didn't get to go to D'Orsay though, I would have liked to see a little more art. We had our French experiences as well, eating lots of crepes, which were enjoyable and addicting, and we went to a Cafe and watched the outside world continue about its business. I got to use my french a little bit, but usually they would speak english back to me, it was a little disapointing, I wanted to practice a bit.

We went to Versailles aswell, and checked out the Palace after waiting hours in the line. Atleast we got some reading done. Kings and Queens have espensive taste, if you can imagine. It was a huge waste though, spending for the sake of spending. Pretty much everything was gold, and if not then it was a priceles peice of art. I'm not sure but I dont think the Kings bed was kingsize I think I enjoyed the massive garden in the 'backyard' the most. The day wasnt great for pictures but it was still pretty impressive. It was funny, we seemed to be eating McDonalds all the time in France, we didnt have a choice unless we wanted to spend more than our budget allowed. It was not a healthy couple of days.

The Siesta and Fiesta City

There was not a whole lot to do in Barcelona, we spent a fair amount of time sleeping and going out. Since we are quite a bit ahead of our schedule, an extra day was added to Barcelona, if only to get a little much needed sleep. We did some walking around, like usual, around town and at one point to a hillside for a nice view. A view we never did find after about 2 hours of uphill walking, it was a disapointing walk back. We went to the Las Tremblas strip, which was interesting if anything. At night you could probably get any drug you wanted without any trouble, people were offering it all over the place, even Charlie, we didnt know what it was so we assumed it was crack. During the day there were these crazy street acts, that were so much acts as people dressing up rediculously and expecting money. There were some magicians and weird songs going on. Even two random dudes crowing at the top of their lungs... what? ya, I don't understand either. We almost gave them money just for how rediculous it was, almost.

The hostel Barcelona in was another small one, which meant easy friends. I think in Spain we learned more about American culture than Spanish. Two of our new friends had many stories to tell about guns in the U.S. The town that they live in has 4 gun stores for every liquor store and they aren't short on liquor stores. They were pretty shocked that me (and all the other canadians in the hostel) wouldn't even know to start looking for a handgun. I bet they wished they had had their guns when ones wallet was stolen, then a camera by the same guy later and finally getting dooped into buying a 200 euro bag of rocks(which was switched with the bag with a computer and cell phone in it). I even met a dude from Ottawa, who at somepoint, I plan to meet with after his return.

I think the part I liked the best about Spain was their siestas, from about 4-6 things shut down and everyone would have a nap. That nap made for late nights, people dont start getting ready to go to bar until atleast 11pm, and get home at 5am. I think thats why we slept in a lot.

Its has been cool meeting people everywhere, but cooler when we run into people from previous cities. We ran into these three sisters on our pubcrawl that we met in Florence a while back. That was nice because we had some instant friends there.

Thats about it for Spain, next I am off to test out my french!!