"Welcome to Paradise..."

My Parents, Kati, Me, Haley, and Spencer
at a Swim-up Bar at the Hard Rock

There's no more fitting quote to kick off a stay in the Hard Rock at Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.  It seems strange (in a good way) to be on vacation again so soon after we got back from Europe, but I'm not going to complain about it.  (Though I might when I get back and have two days to prep for my NC Supreme Court argument!)

The trip down here left something to be desired.  In what seems to be a theme for our winter travel, the flight was pretty turbulent.  At one point, the plane spontaneously dropped about 2 feet and my mom let out a shriek that scared all of us.  Still, we made it down here in one piece and, after navigating the maze of border control winding through the thatched-roof buildings of the airport, we were on our way to the resort.

It was about a 30 minute drive from the airport to the resort.  I was struck by just how empty the country is.  Besides a smattering of "Se Vende" signs (for sale) and a few seemingly abandoned construction projects, there was nothing.  And then we got to the resort...

This place is huge!  They have somewhere north of 3,000 rooms and what seems like dozens of pools, fountains, restaurants, and ponds.  To put this in perspective, I've been running around the resort every morning and, if I just do a loop around the outside of the resort, it just about gives me my 5k for the day.

Now, this is not my vacation.  By that I mean that I didn't plan it and it diverges from the typical "Jackson Vacation" in that we're relaxing and hanging out at the resort instead of traveling constantly to take in the obscure and quirky cultural landmarks that happen to catch my fancy.  Now, that's not to say that this is not a great vacation (it is) and it's not to say that I'm not having a blast (I am).  It's only to say that those who have become accustomed to reading about our exploits should know that this week is slightly different.  It is also worth noting that this chapter in our travels marks the introduction of four new characters - my parents, my brother Spencer, and his girlfriend Haley.

Punta Cana, located on the most eastern peninsula on Hispanola is, simply put, a Caribbean paradise.  It's becoming super-saturated with resorts, but that doesn't really detract from the true draw of the area - the beach.  The area is world-renowned, and with good reason, for it's stunning white sand beaches and turquoise blue water.  Flanking the point are 36 km of pristine beaches.  One thing that has struck me being down here for a day now is the surf.  There are some serious waves.  It really makes me want to get out there and do some surfing.

My greatest disappointment from this trip (Yes, it's the beginning of the week and I can already tell you) is that my dreams of a glorious day trip have been quashed.  They have tons of tourist agencies down here that are more than willing to help you plan a trip...as long as it's one of their standard trips that are easily marketed to the masses.  With that said, the trip that I wanted to take happened to be one of the ones that they offered.

North of Punta Cana is another peninsula called Samana.  It is truly one of the most interesting locations in the Dominican.  There is a great waterfall (Salto de Limon) in the middle of the jungle that can only be reached by horseback.  It's 150 meters tall and falls into a crystalline pool perfect for swimming.  Samana is also north of a bay, most of which is a protected nature preserve, that is famous for one thing above all others: humpback whales.  Between January and March (yes, right now), Samana is one of the top five destinations in the world to see humpback whales.  They come to this bay once a year to breed and rear their calfs.  They say that during these winter months, visitors have a 95% chance of seeing the whales!  I've been looking forward to seeing both of these things for quite some time.  We had planned to take a day and check them out.  The canned trip that the agency offered was perfect, you catch a plane to Samana, visit the waterfall in the morning, and go whale watching in the afternoon.  The only problem was that the next time they were offering the trip was on February 17 - three days after we leave.  Even when we offered to fill an entire plane (9 people) if they would help us schedule a trip this week, the couldn't (or wouldn't) make it work.

One more interesting factoid about Samana, at the tip of the peninsula is Playa Rincon which is notable because it is the fist place that Christopher Colombus landed in the New World.  It's supposed to be absolutely breathtaking.  I apologize in advance for the lack of posts and pictures.  I'm pretty busy drinking, relaxing, and enjoying paradise.

Stranded in Bruxelles -The City of the Whited Sepulchre

The Grand Place

In Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, the main character Marlow, describes Brussels as "a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre."  By this, he alludes to Christ's characterization of the Pharisees as "whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."  (Matthew 23:27.)  This is the third time that I've been to Brussels and, in my experience, this characterization is fairly accurate.  In fact, I've never successfully traveled through Brussels without having serious issues.

Until today our trip had been too perfect.  Something was bound to go wrong, and today it did.  Our flight home left Brussels at 12:10 p.m.  We drug ourselves out of bed early enough to catch the 8:36 a.m. train from Bruges.  After our New Year's Eve celebration, that was quite a feat and we were both still feeling pretty rough.

On the train from Brussels to the airport we found out that the woman at the ticket counter in Bruges gave us the wrong tickets.  The conductor pointed this out to us and scolded us, but took pity on our ignorance, seeming more frustrated with the lady from Bruges than with us.  He simply told us to make sure that we got the right ticket next time.  I thought that this would be the end of our troubles, but boy was I wrong.

We got to the airport around 9:50 a.m. - more than two hours before our flight - completely exhausted, only to find out that our flight had been inexplicably cancelled!  We stood in line for over an hour waiting to talk to the airline staff before someone finally explained the situation to us.  When the plane was coming in from Washington, there was a "bird strike."  That means that a bird got stuck in one of the plane's engines.  We were told that, when there is a bird strike, the plane is immediately grounded for 24 hours so that they can clean the engine and make sure it is working properly.  The problem for us, though, was that there were no other flights out of Brussels that would get us home today.  Instead, the airline booked all of the passengers rooms at the Airport Sheraton and comped all of our meals for the day.  The flight situation was so dire that they couldn't even find a way to get a surgeon back to Atlanta today so that he could perform a critical surgery in the morning.  Ironically, the last time that I was in Brussels it was because I was on a flight back to Milan that had been cancelled and I had to stay over in a crummy airport hotel.

If we were stuck in Bruges, that would be one thing, but being stuck in Brussels was not particularly exciting, especially because we were both about to keel over from exhaustion.  Still, we decided to make the best of the situation.  After dropping our stuff at the hotel, we hopped on a train back up to the center of Brussels to do a little sightseeing.

As most everything was closed, we just did a lot of walking around and exploring.  We started at the Grand Place - undoubtedly the part of the city that Marlow was referring to in Heart of Darkness.  The buildings there are stunning.  From there, we grabbed a few beers for later and walked down to the Manniken Pis, a statue of a little boy peeing that has become a symbol of Brussels and Belgium.  They typically dress him up in a wide variety of different costumes, depending on the time of year or the various holidays, but because it's New Year's Day, he was naked.

Our next stop was at the Delirium Cafe.  They are famous for two things.  First, and most significantly, it is the cafe with the largest number of beers - somewhere over 2,000.  Second, they are the makers of Delirium Tremens, which they claim has been voted the best beer in the world (trust me, it's nowhere close).  Still, the cafe was really cool.  It's set in a yellowed basement in a back alley with metal beer posters and trays all over the room.

My last goal for the day was to visit the European Union Parliament.  This proved to be extremely difficult.  We walked for miles, often in the wrong direction.  We followed signs that led us to the wrong places and got lost several times in the sprawl of Brussels.  After two hours of wandering around, we were about to give up and started walking to a structure that I thought was a train station.  Much to my surprise, it was the Parliament.  The building was really neat.  Even though we couldn't go inside, it was cool to be at the epicenter of so many important political decisions.

After finding the Parliament, we were both spent and went back to the hotel to take a nap, have dinner, and relax for the rest of the night (with several good beers, of course).  I'm crossing my fingers that our attempt to make it home tomorrow will be more successful than it was today.

In Bruges

Kati an Me at the Snow & Ice Sculpture Festival

Yesterday was New Year's Eve and it was a busy day for us in Bruges.  The city was packed with tourists; something that I definitely didn't expect when we booked the trip.

The first stop on our tour of Bruges was the Disney Snow & Ice Sculpture Festival.  It sounds really cheesy and kid-oriented, but it was awesome.  Seriously, the things that they did with ice was amazing.  There were castles, pirate ships, bars, and dozens of storybook scenes.  There was even an ice slide that you could take down from the ice castle.

After we got our fill of the freezing cold, we hustled over to Heilig-Bloedbasiliek (the Basilica of the Holy Blood).  It's so named because it houses a vial of Christ's blood, brought to Bruges in the 12th century during the crusades.  The basilica was stunning.  The entire chapel was painted and adorned with golden designs.  It was very reminiscent of the painted churches in Eastern Europe.

By the time we finished up at the basilica, we were both ready to relax and get some beer, so we headed down to the Brouwerij De Halve Maan, the only operating brewery still in Bruges.  They make four different beers: Brugse Zot (their flagship), and three beers sold under the Straffe Hendrik label, a tripel, a quadrupel, and a quintessentially Brugian brew called "Heritage."  The Straffe Hendrik beers were particularly great.

We spent most of our afternoon exploring the streets of Bruges and stopping in different shops, grabbing a few beers along the way.  After being turned away from climbing the Belfry, we decided to stop in to the nearby Salvador Dali museum.  Dali is one of my favorite painters and his exhibition did not disappoint.  Even though there weren't any of his most famous paintings on display, we got to see tons of his rarer pieces and get a glimpse into some of his even more bizarre and surreal works that would likely be considered too strange or too perverse for the general public.

Enjoying our Westvletern Conquest

Our last stop in the afternoon was Cambrinus, a well-known beer bar in the city.  They closed at 4:00 and we squeaked in at 3:50, on a mission to complete the hardest leg of my beer tasting adventure in Belgium.  The Westvletern Abbey, located in rural Flanders, about an hour south of Bruges, produces some of the most sought after beers in the world.  The monks there still do all of the production themselves.  You can only get their beer AT the abbey and they limit how much you can buy.  To begin with, you have to call a single phone line and hope that you get through.  If you do, you can make a reservation to stop by on limited days and pick up the beer.  When you make a reservation, you have to give them a license plate and you can only get two wooden cases of beer once every 60 days.  The beers are not supposed to be sold on the commercial market but are regarded by many as the best beers in the world.  The beers are sold in nondescript bottles that can only be distinguished by the color of their cap: green for the blonde; blue for the 8, and yellow for the 12.  We had gotten word that Cambrinus served the Westvletern brews (for a price) and we had to check it out.  We were in luck!  They had all three.  We tried the blonde and the 8, both of which were truly incredible.  I don't know if I would go so far as to say that they are undeniably the best beers in the world, but they were very enjoyable.  My only regret is that we decided against trying the 12 as well.

After a tiring few days, we decided to take a quick nap to rejuvenate ourselves for the New Year's Eve festivities.  Thank God that we did, because it was another long night.  After an enjoyable dinner, we wandered around the city, grabbed a few more chocolates, and enjoyed a couple of beers to kill time before midnight.

Around 11:30, we walked down to t' Zand.  The whole square was a giant party.  They were playing the top songs from 2013.  It was hilarious to see the Belgians lose their minds when "Wrecking Ball" came on.  At midnight they set off a very impressive fireworks display set to Abba's "Happy New Year."  It was a truly incredible ending to the perfect week in Europe.  We capped it off by enjoying a bottle of St. Martin's Rose Brut and turning in so that we could still manage to wake up early to begin our final journey home.

To the Bruges!

The Basilica of the Holy Blood By Night

Yesterday was a travel day.  We slept in and bid farewell to a Luxembourg that was finally starting to come alive after the holidays.  But first, we had to stop at the Notre Dame Cathedral.  It was breathtakingly beautiful in a very understated way.  The columns were all carved stone; the tapestreys that covered the walls looked like they dated back to the 1500s; and the stained glass windows were simply divine.

It was a four hour train ride from Luxembourg to Bruges, with a change in Brussels.  We took advantage of a short layover to grab some hot chocolate (mine was white hot chocolate and it was amazing).  We got into Bruges at 4:00 p.m. only to find that the rain had beat us here.  Luckily though, it had mostly passed by the time we arrived and we only had to deal with a slight drizzle.

Bruges is unlike any city I've ever been to.  There's this kind of dreary yet mystical air to it that's very difficult to describe to anyone that hasn't experienced it for themselves.  I like the way that Kati described it best.  She said that it "feels Gothic."  After settling into our hotel - Martins Brugge - we grabbed our first Belgian beers from the John Martin brewery.  There was a strawberry lambic, a brown, and a brown scotch ale.  The lambic was by far both of our favorites.

By the time we finished our beers, it was well into the evening and we walked around exploring a little bit.  We stopped into the Markt for some Gluhwein and to peruse the shops before taking a stroll along the canal and killing a little time before dinner.

Me at Den Dijver

Our dinner was to die for.  We ate at Den Dijver, a gastronomic beer extravaganza.  The chef is world-renowned for his cooking.  He finds inspiration in different Belgian beers and then pairs the dish with the Belgian beer that inspired it.  Before the meal, they served us an apperitiv and a really light celery soup.  My first beer was a white ale made specially for the restaurant and Kati's was a cherry lambic that was to die for.  Kati started with mussels in a beer broth (paired with a blonde) that was really good.  The highlight of her meal though, was the main course, dory with eggplant and zucchini (paired with another blonde).  She finished up with a chocolate brownie with beer ice cream and a very good stoout.  I started with an incredible plate of quail with brussels in a celery sauce (paired with the breathtaking Rodenbach Grand Cru).  My main dish was phesant with pears and chicory (paired with a smooth brown ale).  Hilariously, when I was finishing the last of my phesant I bit down on...wait for it...a lead pellet from the shotgun that killed it.  Finally, I finished up with a creme brule (paired with an amazing dark beer).  It was hands down one of the best meals that I've ever had in my life!

After a leisurely three-hour gastronomic experience, we tried to stop in for a final beer, but found that most of the bars on my list of "must hits" were already closed for the night.  We settled for going to "The Pub" simply because it had an extensive beer list.  Kati got a glass of Bush (Belgian Bush...which is much better than American Bush) and I got a glass of the dark St. Bernardus 12.  We met some two very fun English couples from Birmingham, but had to turn in after our beers so we would have enough energy for our big day and New Year's Eve celebrations.

The Great Luxembourg Tour

Our big day in Luxembourg started at 8:00 a.m....well, mine did.  While Kati was getting ready, I set out into the city by myself to look for breakfast.  The city was deserted.  I was seriously the only person in the old town, save the Luxembourgish guard standing at attention outside of the Grand Ducal Palace.  The empty city was eerily beautiful through the soft drizzle.  Sadly, I couldn't find an open bakery to save my life, and we had to skip breakfast.

I was pretty nervous about the rest of the day because it was the first time that I had ever rented a car in a foreign country.  Luckily, I planned ahead and took a good roadmap of the country and I had a trusty navigator.  The car situation could not have worked out better.  The hotel owns two cars that the rent out to guests for cheap.  As an added benefit, the cars are already insured, so we didn't have to jump through any hoops to get international insurance.

It turns out that driving over here and finding your way is much easier than I had expected.  In fact, I like it a lot more than driving in the States because there's much less to remember.  We had the whole day ahead of us, so we decided to replicate our favorite day in Montenegro and go on a "Great Tour of Luxembourg."  (Though, without Georgi, our incredible Montenegrin guide that made our trip so much fun)

Our first stop, was the American Military Cemetery in Hamm, just outside of Luxembourg City.

Luxembourg, as the site of the Battle of the Bulge, is the logical place to have a large military cemetery.  I've never been to a military cemetery before.  It was a surreal experience.  It was exactly how I picture Arlington National Cemetery, but smaller.  The true highlight of the cemetery is the fact that General Patton is buried there.  For me, however, the most moving experience was seeing the graves for the unknown soldiers, marked with a cross that read "Here Rests in Honored Gory a Comrade in Arms Known But to God."  Even walking around a cemetery with a few thousand graves, it's impossible to  not feel the weight of the incomprehensible magnitude of World War II and the unfathomable loss of life that resulted.

After the cemetery we headed off for the Moselle Valley - the stop that I was most excited about.  The Moselle Valley is the smallest wine region in the world but includes parts of Luxembourg, Germany, and France.  The Luxembourg side of the Moselle Valley is famous for its white wines and especially for its sparkling wines (cremants).  Unfortunately for us, even though there are dozens of vineyards in the Moselle Valley, almost all of them were closed for the winter.  Luckily, I had done my research ahead of time, so we didn't waste time looking for open wineries.

The Moselle Valley is truly incredible, even in the winter.  The "Route du Vin" (Wine Road) runs the entire length of the valley right along the river that separates Luxembourg from Germany.  There are no huge towns.  Instead, there are just little villages, built on the hills, every 5 km or so.  The vineyards must have outnumbered the houses in the valley two-to-one.  Even though there were no grapes left on the vines, they were really impressive.

The only true winery that we stopped at was Poll-Fabaire in Wormeldange.  If we could only see one winery, I'm glad it was Poll-Fabaire.  They let us taste just about everything.  In terms of white wines, the three uniquely Luxembourgish wines are Rivaner, Ebling, and Auxerrois.  I've had several Auxerrois wines on our trip and they've all been fantastic.  The bartender at Poll-Fabaire, however, advised us to pass on the Rivaner and Ebling because they're just table wines and there are much better wines in the country.  We had an amazing Riesling, but the true highlight was the cremants.  Typically, when you're picking out a sparkling wine you have very limited options - brut, dry, and maybe a rose.  Here, the world of cremants is wide open.  We tried a Riesling cremant that was to die for, a Chardonnay cremant that Kati loved, and a Pinot Noir cremant that was truly divine.  Unsurprisingly, we stocked up on wines at the store.  (While getting so many wines sounded like a great idea at the time, my back is regretting that decision now.)

After the winery, we set out for to find a spot that I had picked out for lunch.  Ander Tourelle is a restaurant near Remich, right on the Route du Vin, that came highly recommended and had a great wine list.  I had done my research to confirm that it was open and to find the address.  My research, however, turned out to be flawed on both counts.  We spent about an hour driving around the valley looking for this place to no avail.  The trip was fun though, we got to see a bunch of vineyards, some incredible houses, and we passed through Schengen several times.  Schengen is a city in the southeastern corner of Luxembourg where Luxembourg, Germany, and France all meet.  It's famous as the place where the Schengen Agreement - establishing modern travel arrangements around Europe for European citizens, among other things - was signed.  In fact, the agreement was signed on a boat that they anchored in the middle of the river, right at the intersection of the three countries.  Finally, we broke down and asked some locals how to find Ander Tourelle.  They pointed us to completely different village than the one listed on the restaurant's website.  At that point, we found it easily, though when we did it was closed.

By the time we made it to the closed restaurant, we were both starving, so the hotel restaurant next door benefitted from our misfortune.  Lunch ended up being a bit pricier than we had anticipated, but it was pretty good.  We successfully stumbled our way through a meal where the menu had no English and the wait staff spoke very little English.  Kati got some shrimp scampi that was rather good and I got an (overcooked) cut of beef with the most incredible cabbage side that I've ever eaten.  We finished our meal off with a local luxury, lemon sorbet doused in a beautiful cremant.  (They tried to get us to substitute vodka for the cremant, but we declined)

After lunch, we decided to see the rest of the country, so we set off up the Route du Vin.  The scenery on the drive was stunning.  We got to experience what it's like to live in Luxembourg as we drove through countless villages and stopped off in a local supermarket to buy some more cremants.  We were in luck because they were doing tons of wine tastings in the grocery store.  Of course we partook and tasted some more fabulous cremants from a few of the vineyards that were closed for the season. We also grabbed two bottles of St. Martin's wines.  I wish that we could have stopped at the Caves du St. Martin.  It's one of the oldest vineyards in the Moselle Valley and their tasting room is built into the caves where they age and store their cremants.  But, like so many other vineyards, they were closed for the season, and they weren't willing to give the two of us a private visit.  Oh well.

Our intermediate destination was a city called Echternach, known for its quaint town square and the largest basilica in Luxembourg.  Along the way, somehow, we accidentally wound up in Germany.  We're not really sure when or how that happened, but we definitely came back into Luxembourg right before we entered Echternach.  The village was amazing.  First, we stopped at a stunning little church in the countryside on the outskirts of the village.  I thought that was great, but when we found our way into the city, it was even better.  The basilica lived up to the hype, as did the city.

Our final stop on our tour was in the northern city of Vianden.  We drove all the way up there just to see a castle that I've heard cannot be missed.  While we got there too late to visit the castle (it closes at 4:30 p.m.), it exceeded our expectations.  It was like something out of a fairy tale and we got there right at dusk.

Once we made it back to Luxembourg City, we went to dinner at Chiggari.  It is quite the unusual place.  It's tucked away in a very old house on a small side street in the heart of the old town.  The first floor is a beer garden and bar while, on the third floor, there is an old-school salon and a gourmet restaurant.  The restaurant looks very "tribal."  The walls are orange and black hand-painted designs and from the ceiling hang the frame of an old canoe and a bunch of decorated beams that look like, in another life, they traveled the world on a magnificent ship.  Chiggari has the best wine list in the country (it was even in the Guinness Book of World Records).  In fact, their sommalier has been recognized as one of the best in all of Europe.

Chiggari has a chef's menu, so we had a four-course meal of the chef's choice.  It was divine.  We started with what I would call the original wine cooler - a cremant mixed with sparkling water and a twist of lime.  The first course, a creamed celery soup with pecans in it, was followed with a perfectly roasted foie gras coupled with a heavenly fig marmalade.  Our main course was some sort of French white fish in two-tiered breaded "boat" and for dessert we had a chocolate ganache, cherries soaked in brandy, and a traditional ice cream cake-like dish from Alise.  The sommolier also paired wines with each of the dishes.  We had an incredible Luxembourgish pinot gris to match our foie gras and finished the meal off with a surprise - a muscato wine that both of us actually liked.  We were shocked.  I've tried muscato wines from many places and I hate all of them.  But this one wine from Spain paired with the dessert so well that we couldn't help but admire it.

After dinner, we took a walk down to the Chemin de la Corniche, known as the most beautiful balcony in Europe because it overlooks Grund.  You can see everything from the walkway along the top of the Casemates Bock.  The city was simply stunning.

I think that Kati put it best.  "Today was the perfect day."

Grund By Night

Casemate Bock at Night

It works!  We successfully avoided the ill effects of jet lag by sleeping away the time difference on the train ride from Brussels to Luxembourg City.  The fruits of our experiment have already been incredible.

When we landed in Brussels, the weather was phenomenal.  It was sunny and about 42 degrees.  Yet as we chugged through the countryside, the weather got increasingly worse.  By the time we arrived in Luxembourg City, it was dreary and raining steadily.  It was about a 1 km walk to our hotel.  Even though it was raininig, the walk through the city was really enjoyable.  It was almost like walking back through time as we moved from the train station, in the new part of the city, to the old town.

Our hotel, the Parc Beaux Arts Hotel, is located right in the center of the old town.  It's a beautiful hotel that they created out of several old houses.  The downstairs is also a restaurant and bar that, especially given the selections of soft jazz spilling into the air, makes you feel like you're in the 1920s and hanging out with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda.

We got into the city around 4:00 in the afternoon and quickly confirmed what I already suspected - everything is closed during the holiday season.  Yet neither that nor the weather deterred us from exploring the city.

Kati on the Wenzel Walk

The old town is really divided into two parts by the Alzette river.  The river, has dug out a very large area of the city.  There is the traditional "old town" (which I call the high town) and Grund, which is in the basin of the Alzette river "valley."  Initially, I just wanted to go to Grund to see the Neurumberg Abbey, but I'm so glad that we made the trip.  The Abbey ended up being closed for the holidays, but we walked around exploring nonetheless.  We must have been guided by our good friend St. Wenceslas (the patron saint of beer), because we stumbled onto the Wenzel Walk (his walk), which led us up to some stunning views from the plateau in Grund.  We could see the new city, the old town, the Casemates Bock, and everything in between.  The highlight had to have been walking along old ramparts and up and down stone fortifications and catching some of the most stunning nightscapes the city has to offer.

We wanted to grab dinner at Am Tiirmschen, a well-known local restaurant specializing in Luxembourgish cuisine.  The only problem was that they were booked solid until 9:00.  Our solution was to go back to the Beaux Arts restaurant and bar and waste a little time.  We grabbed a few glasses of wine and a plate of Luxembourgish charcutterie to tide us over until dinner (all of which were excellent).  Finally, it was dinner time and Am Tiirmschen lived up to the hype.  Kati got what I've been told is Luxembourg's unofficial dish, smoked pork in a cream sauce over broad beans.  It was truly some of the most incredible pork either of us has ever had.  I went for a lamb shank with vegetables (which was also very good).

After dinner, we weren't quite ready to call it a night, so we stopped in at Steiler, the oldest pub in Luxembourg.  It opened in 1691!  We had an amazing time amongst the Luxembourg locals, socializing to some interesting electronica remixes of popular songs.  The best part was really good beer was dirt cheap.  I got a Diekirsh amber ale, the darker relative of Luxembourg's most popular beer (named after the town it's brewed in to the north).  It was alright, but it couldn't compare to the beer that Kati got - La Chouffe, an amazing Belgian brew.  After two drinks at Steiler, we decided to call it a night so that we'd be well-rested for our big Sunday.

Bon Voyage Once Again

822 - The number of days since we returned from spending two months in Eastern Europe
821 - The number of days that I've been planning our next trip to Europe.

After months of planning, we're about to embark on a very brief jaunt to Europe - Belgium and Luxembourg specifically.  Until recently, I didn't think that Belgium and Luxembourg constituted "strange" or "unusual" destinations, though I've been assured they are.  I shutter to hear what people would say when they find out that my top five destinations are (in order): (1) Iran; (2) Cuba; (3) Madagascar; (4) Greenland; and (5) Russia.  Regardless, I'm excited.

This trip is so different from our last trip.  We're still backpacking, but we're staying in pretty nice hotels (not seedy hostels).  More significantly, we're only going for five days (not two months).  I've been told that the secret to taking a weekend excursion to Europe is to fly somewhere and immediately get on a train for several hours so that you can sleep through your jet lag.  That's our goal, to test this theory.

We'll arrive in Brussels tomorrow afternoon at 11:50 a.m.  Then we're going immediately hop on a three-hour train to Luxembourg City.  We're only staying in Luxembourg for two days, so we're going to have to make the most of it.  We'll be spending our time brushing up on World War II history and sights (including stopping to pay hommage at General Patton's grave) while enjoying gourmet food.  On Sunday we're going to rent a car - which, I must admit, I'm rather nervous about - and explore the country ourselves.  In particular, we're going to be driving through the Moselle Valley, the smallest wine region in the world.  Luxembourg is famous for its white and sparkeling wines, many of which are made with unique varietals that are rarely seen in the States.  If there's time, we're also going to stop in and explore Schengen, the namesake for one of the most famous European agreements in modern times.

After our short stay in Luxembourg, we're going to catch a train to Bruges for three days and celebrate New Year's Eve.  This second leg of our trip will be consumed (literally) with eating chocolate and drinking beer, with a good splash of culture and winter fun thrown in for good measure.  To prepare for our trip we watched In Bruges, which turned out to be one of the stranger movies I've seen in some time.  Five days is not nearly enough time to explore these two cities, but it's certainly better than nothing, and I couldn't be more excited.