chaque jour je t’aime davantage, aujourd’hui plus qu’hier et bien moins que demain

so, it was a rather spontaneous trip. we decided on thursday to go to belgium on Saturday.

and we actually visited Aalst (Oilst), Brussels (Bruxelles), Ghent (Gent), Bruges (Brugges) and Dendermonde.

And Belgium is a place.. whereby you wonder what language to use. (hence the brackets). I tried asking this guy for “hotel de ville” and he stared at me and asked what’s that. so i translated it to town centre.. and he thought for quite a while.. before asking me “are you referring to city hall?”

sheesh. it’s very weird though, because different parts of Belgium speak different languages. For example, Dutch, Flemish, German, French and English.

The safest? Stick with English. most of them should be able to understand.. if they’re staying in a bigger city i suppose.

We did couchsurfing for the first time.. and the place was so cool! we stayed in this castle room.. and well, camwhoring time!

The father is an artist, hence the walls are all brightly and nicely painted!

The little daughter called Enea is so so so so super duper cute! (ps, I don’t know why she always puts her hands there though)

First up was Brussels, and we had good food.

I even tried mussels (which i don’t really eat).. and it’s nice!!

my plat.. part of our menu complets.. there was apperitifs and waffles and cheese croquettes + salad as well. 12,50E

Grand place is a beautiful place! our expression was like “wahhhhhh”

ben tried hard to capture the flag!

we were looking for toilets and found this really nice place!

Mannekin Pis, the peeing boy

Waffles aplenty!

tell me you’re salivating too!

and of course, chocolate fondue!

we went to the carnival in aalst the next day. it’s the biggest carnival for the northen part. for the southern part, it’s in binches.

tons of drags around:

poor real horses, acting as the carousels..

damn scary ride that we have no balls to take. it turns 360deg, and while you’re up there, you’re turning 360deg as well! it’s madness!

i’ve got tons of photos on the carnival.. but i’ll just select a few to put up.. you can go and have a look at facebook for the rest..

this is eline! we met through tommy, this person whom we wanted to couchsurf with in aalst.

and marta, marie-line and tina!

they even gave out free onions!

oh btw, you’re supposed to carry a plastic bag with you, because they will throw out sweets, chocolates, sitckers, onions, nutella, etcetc.. and you can keep everything in your plastic bag!

and look at batman’s automobile.. -_-”’

interesting flashes huh?

i thought this was quite cool!

damn funny, tommy is a se-pehpeh!

and ben was going gaga over Macho men! aka the people from the fire brigade.. wahaha. photos are in zhijian’s camera, my battery was dying..

what we learnt from aalst: people are crazy. jess got kissed twice during the carnival.. the first one was a shock, so no one had any photos. the second one.. the drag bent on his knee.. and she sat on it.. so she got kissed on the NECK. twice.

and when i was walking out of the bar, some clown (i mean he was dressed up as one) just grabbed my face and i hurriedly turned to the side so i only got a kiss on my cheeks. well kiss on the cheek = bisous, so don’t get angry ok my dear? ben, who was walking behind me got quite a shock too.

and of course, we had to go to pretty brugges

i like this shot!

even the dogs there are so pretty!

very quaint old town.. i like!

moral of the story: never ask ben to help you take photos. he will just destroy every single one. i asked him to help me take with the nice buildings.. then he just took the nice building and cut me off the photo. sheesh.