Part 142: Milan-Sneek

This will be like a shortened version of the entire trip from Milan to Sneek. With me is Lois whom I met up with in Brussels, Belgium.

Milan was like the most stupidest place in the world haha, After the first night where we sat around doing not a lot on the top of a random hill, we went to bed and met a German who was fast asleep at 9,.30 so, not to disturb her, we went to sleep too... Because we're cool.

The next morning we woke up and had good intentions of doing a lot of touring around the city of Milan... Note: I said good INTENTIONS. We walked up to the nearest tram and arrived in the centre of Milan by around 10-11. There we went in search of the most famous thing in Milan other than its fashion- 'The Last Supper' unfortunately, to see the silly painting we had to book 2 wweeks in advance so we did not see it but instead playted cards in the park and also walked around aimlessly for the day. For tea, cereal in the park. Nice.

That night, when I was in the hostel me and Lizzy met two random Portuguese people who were really distraught because they had ALL their stuff stolen from them on a bus that I had to take the next day to get to the airport... Awkward. I did learn how to count to 10 in Portuguese. Win.

Airport. Flight. Belgium for the second time.

Belgium. Bus. Station. Look for Lois. We spent over an hour and half looking for each other in the station and all my credit was used up in this time. It turned out for like the first part of the search I was in the completely wrong station which was so annoying because I spent like $12 of my credit giving directions to places that Lois could not possibly get to, and vice versa. After that very long and worrying period of time I eventually made my way to the other station and looked around for half an hour before FINALLY finding Lois at some spot. It was the first tiem I had seen her in 2 and a bit years and I had always promised to visit her one day. Promise fulfilled. Then the next problem: I didnt actually have any directions on how to get to the hostel we were staying at...Idiot.

We looked for an internet cafe, seeing the main oart of Brussels in one hit, and then made our way to the hostel. This again took a long period of time. Eventually we found our way using my awesome french skills and Lois' native dutch skills (in Belgium people sspeak French Dutch or both) Hoorah! We were on Rue D'Elephant (lol) and were settled in our decent hostel. Pizza. talking. Sleep.

Day one in Belgium consisted of exploring Belgium and first started at a flea market. The flea market was so expensive and pretty small but I thought it was okay and Lois bought a few things there (making me carry them in my bag... well I offered...) We also tried on some random sunnies there they were so ugly or stupid we couldn't resist. Hehe...

We then spent time looking for the Manneken Pis which is the most famous thing in all of Belgium, apparently. We found it eventually after getting lost and ending up in completely opposite areas to orignally intended (Lois just pointed out 'you're making it seem like we got lost a lot of times' , well we were) We eventually found it but were more impressed by the chocolate mannekin pis behind it. Seriously, this thing was soooo small it could fit in my pocket, okay not literally but it was like... wtf? THIS is famous?

More of Brussels. Churches. Train. Antwerpen.

We hadn't anywhere to stay in Antwerpen so we spent the first part finding somewhere. We got a hotel room in a place just near the station, without realising it was actually quite crap. Oh well. The location was amazing though, right near the station. I should mention, the station is AMAZING. It is also featured here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UE3CNu_rtY ... best station in the world. Anyway, after hostel locating we went up to the old part of Antwerpen looking for something Lois had read about on the internet. On the way we got distracted by the world championship trials for a random bike sport which was just in a nromal market which was made into a Bike Parkour sport place... Its impossible to explain really but you can sort of see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g4Dft50mLA&feature=related... Ours was actually much cooler than that.

WE then did a boat tour around the outside edges of the city but were left a bit diappointed because it was a bit boring but oh well, we learnt stuff about stuff which is always good to know. Yes... Then we had Waffles (in dutch I learnt how to say I have waffles which is: ik heb wafels. Heb jij wafels? I think not!) They were good waffles too. More walking. Dinner (cold pasta salad bought from the supermarket in the street, I am so embarrasing) then we looked for a music festval which Lois thought was going on but we couln't find it... we asked around to random people and eventually found a music thing but it wasn't what Lois orignally though (it turned out that was actually in August, not July... oops) so we hung out there with a bunch of middleaged partiers listening to live music which wasnt bad anyway. We then wanted to go clubbing so we found a place in a park which was scary because we were walking through some random park in the dark and I was like we are all gonna die! and then the police came past.. scary stuff. We found the club but it was a €10 entry fee so we decided against it (I am poor... poor lois) and instead went to a pub had belguim beers (maes) and then went back to the hotel to sleep.

The last day in Belgium was raining so we went to a museum. Antwerpen is the world diamond capital so we went to the Diamond museum and learnt a whole lot about diamonds, So interesting haha, we also cracked the diamond safe and stole 2 diamonds, no joke. I have it in my bag even now. It took a while but we did it. After the diamond museum we walked around taking photos of shop windows which was fun then went to another museum which we thought was a cartoon museum but it turned out to be a renassaince musuem or something.. I dont know. It wasn't all that great but oh well.

Coffee. More BIke watching. Train station. Rotterdam. Train. Driving with Lois in the rain. Sneek. My new home for the week. Okay, so to be perfectly blunt: Lois' house pwns all. Best. House. Ever. Its HUGE too and omg so cool. We watched a movie in her home cinema which has a MASSIVE screen I mean, bigger than me in height and obviously width as well... Its like a real cinema screen. We watched the boat that rocked. By 1.30pm I was off to sleep in my room. Which also happened to be the cinema room because it had a fold out bed and of my options it was the easiest. It has its own two person ensuite anyway, so it seemed decent enough. Best. House.

I woke up today at 1.30pm for some reason and met Lois on the computer. I still hadn't seen her family except her brother Jelle (yell-eh) who was miding the house while her family were on a n island. We decided to go to some car festival thing which was a 10 minute drive away. When we got there it was a €7.50 entry fee which was annoying but then you had to paty for EVERYTHING when you got in even the toilet, biggest waste of money ever. It wasn't event that interesting so we stayed for as long as we felt obliged to then left to go for a bike ride around Lois' town, Sneek (snake)

Sneek is very cool with rivers and stuff all through it. We had ice cream and Lois showed me her old high school and primary school and other things around the town. When we got back to her house her family arrived home so I met them and they had friends over so I met them too. Her family are so nice too. Its great here :)

We had chinese for tea and I sat around trying to make sense of the bizarre dutch language until they went home and then I came and typed this.

Sorry for my absence.

I'll be here probably from now on. Amsterdam tomorrow bright and early.

xx

p.s Happy Birthday Ruby and I well do a Month Summary for July tomorrow possibly.