Beer, beer, cathedral and more beer.

Ok, well maybe not only, but those were the highlights of this weekend. Let me catch you up.

Last week was a short week because of a holiday. They boys didn't have school for Armistice Day on Tuesday, subsequently they were home for more hours than my family is allowed to ask me to work in a day so Francois (a.k.a. FX-- short for Francois-Xavier) was in town and kept the boys all day. Regardless it was a really long week just because the other days the boys seemed to design to piss me off at every turn. They're good boys, don't get me wrong, but I'm usually glad to hand them off when Val gets home. haha

So Friday night I wanted to blow off some steam so Myriam and I set out for centre-city looking for a few bars we'd heard about. We found 3 of the 4 we were looking for, the first two were quiet little bar/restaurant type places that were unremarkable and the third was closed..."invitation only." Which is too bad because Chez Maman (which translates to 'Momma's House') looked like it would be the most fun with regular drag shows and exciting crowds. I'll try again some other time, hopefully it was only a private party that night. Anyway, as we usually tend to do we settled into an Irish pub (new one this time) and stayed there comfortable most of the night.
As I may have mentioned before Bruxelles doesn't have a last call, so we sat in O'Reilley's and kept an eye on the clock. We watched the hands tick past the last hour to catch the bus, then the last hour to catch the subway, then the last hour to catch the night bus and finally decided that it would just be easier and cheaper to stay out until the early morning buses started running again and avoid the cab fare. We left the pub sometime in the morning and began wandering about the city. Along with a lack of closing time, Bruxelles also lacks free toilets. Most any place you go will charge you 30-70 cents to use their toilets. So as a matter of principle I avoid that whenever I can. Well, needless to say after a long night at the bar Myriam and I both had to pee desperately. We looked around a bit for a decent alley and finally decided too go back to St. Catherine's Cathedral. If you've read any tour books about this city, you may have noticed that this particular cathedral has an unusual feature...there is a public (and free!!!) urinal attached to the side of the building. Not so much as attached, but a section of wall was converted into a urinal complete with trough and running water. So myriam and I grinned at eachh other and decided to go for it! We took turns copping a squat while the other held purse, coat, etc. It's trickier than you may think to pee on a wall behind you while missing shoes and jeans and not touching a single thing around you (trust me, if you could smell it, you'd agree it is a hands-off situation). Ok, before my family becomes embarrased to know me, I'll digress. Hopefully it's not too late.

Moving along, I went straight to Kelly's house on Saturday moningand just vegged out on the sofa for most of the day. I was babysitting later that night so I booked back to Bruxelles in the early evening still pretty ragged from lack of sleep. Luckily I bathed the boys, read them a few short stories and put them to bed. I managed to stay awake until I heard their parents come home and then I was out like a light.

Sunday Myriam, Kelly Gudrun and myself caught a train to Brugge for the 2nd annual beer festival. It was loads of fun and super busy. There were something like 55 different brewers represented andd about 200 beers available. They were served in small-ish 15cl glasses so we were able to try half a dozen different beers. There was one inparticular that caught out eye....the VandenBossche Brewery. We made a point to go over there to try out a few of their drinks. I really liked them, no one esle was much a fan of them. Infact that seemed to be the trend of the day, the ones I really loved everyone else shuttered at. Either they just don't know what they're missing or my taste in beer leans towards the bizarre.

I don't think I've ever felt patriotic before

I went to a party hosted in a hotel downtown here by two of Kelly's friends to watch the election results roll in. Because of the time difference it was an all night affair. In the lobby of the hotel was a much larger party hosted by a bunch of organizations, the original plan was to spend most oof the night in the big party and duck upstairs now and again for a bit of a rest. Turns out that the big party was a little too big so we spent the night in the gorgeous suite on the top floor. We watched CNN most of the time and switched over to BBC or some German chanel for giggles. The brits seemed asleep compared to the flashy lights and crazy animations of CNN and the Germans seemed a little too enthusiatic as a whole, but one of their announcers was so old he looked like he was going to keel over mid-sentencce, he kept swaying while he talked.
Anyway, it was a long night and the 5 of us (Stephanie, Trevor, Myriam, Kelly, Gudrun and myself) were the only ones of our group who stuck it out the whole night. I was expecting to have many more than that, but it was a Tuesday so I guess I can't blame them. It seemed like it took forever for polls to close and when they finally had all closed I think I felt for the first time actual patriotism! I was (for one shining moment) proud to be an american (and I swear I don't know you if you started humming after reading those words). I was floored that Virginia turned blue as well, it kinda gave me hope again.