Happy New Year!!!

Scott and I hope that 2008 has been treating you all well thus far! We started off 2008 with a wonderful dinner at Matt and JoAnn’s flat and then walked up to see the fireworks over Big Ben. It was absolutely perfect because we got to see all the festivities and still managed to stay away from the crowds. There were about eight of us celebrating with champagne while they shot fireworks off the London eye and lit up Parliament and the Thames. A great start to the New Year!

We got to go to our first Chelsea football game last week. It was so much fun! Chelsea football (soccer) fans are absolutely crazy! It was a really exciting game against Everton (another very good team) and Chelsea ended up winning with a goal in the last few minutes. However, we would have been thoroughly entertained by the crowd even if the actual athletics had been terrible! The fans have all of these clever little songs they sing and as they get more drunk, they add in more and more curse words. There are songs to berate the other team (such as a simple little diddy called “You are sh*t”) or the referee (“The referee is a wanker”) or to brag about how good Chelsea is (“Chelsea’s the best so f*ck all the rest”). Hilarious!

For our January trip, we decided we’d head to Brussels. Why Brussels you ask? Actually, no reason other than it is close and we could get there by train. So off we went! We saw all the sights that Brussels is famous for including The Grand Place (the square in the center of the city with a beautiful town hall and buildings tipped in gold leaf), The Sablon (another smaller square with amazing pastry shops and a chocolate shop that looked more like Tiffany’s than somewhere to eat), the Atomium (a huge iron and steel structure that was built for the 1958 International Exhibition to represent an atom magnified 165 billion times), and the Manneken Pis (a statue of a little boy peeing that the city dresses up in little outfits…random, I know). We (read Katie) sampled cheery flavored beer and lots of yummy Belgian chocolate.

Just in case anyone is thinking of making a trip to Brussles, here are a few tips for you.
#1: Although they did invent them, Belgium really doesn’t pride themselves on Belgium waffles so don’t get too excited about finding them there. Quite disappointing.
#2: French fries (“frites”) were actually invented in Belgium, not France, and the people there really do pride themselves on that. So get ready because they come with everything!
#3: The northwest side of town really isn’t the most morally sound part of Brussels. Not knowing this little tid bit, we stayed at an adorable little Bed and Breakfast there. It was really a great place even though we had to fight our way past the transvestite prostitutes to get into the door. Nice choice, Scott.