from the laaand of chocolate...

Hello all! I write to you now from Brussels in Belgium on the computer in the lobby of our hotel which Sonni and Jess have dubbed "the most annoying computer ever to exist" and they are right. They wouldn't let me leave our hostel here before I'd tried it and I can safely attest to its level of annoyingness. On our second day in Amsterdam we met up with Sonni's Dutch friends Cilla and Manon who are twins who live a couple of hours from Amsterdam. As they aren't actually from the city they weren't totally familiar with it but more so than us so they took us around and bought us Dutch candy to try etc. We pretty much alked the length of the whole city that day so by the evening we were really glad to go on our night time canal cruise that we'd booked to go on. The cruise was good cause you got to see parts of the city you never would have otherwise and we got to see the famous Red Light District hookers in their windows from a safe distance from their scary pimps which was a plus haha. We then went to a bar in Amsterdam and back to our hostel. We took the train to Brussels yesterday which was surprisingly easy and a very short journey. We wandered around Brussels and saw the Mannekin Pis which is this famous monument they have of a little boy pissing water which gets dressed up in different outfits for special occasions... random. We went to the Grand Place which is this really impressive square, we went to the Royal Palace and the Parc de Bruxelles which was beautiful. We ate dinner in a nice restaurant that looked out on to the busy streets and then we went for Belgian waffles which were probably one of the best things I've ever tasted- yum. Jess adores it here because they mostly speak French and it's cool cause it has a totally different feel to Amsterdam. We have a slightly bizarre Japanese roommate here who sleeps all the time and is travelling alone, but she's not annoying which is good. The receptionist in our hotel is as bitchy as the reviews said she was barking "I said say your name not spell it!" upon our first meeting with her, but aside from that it's a nice hostel. Anyways I shall leave you now but I'll post again soon- we are off to Paris today where we get to stay in a proper hotel! joy!

Au revoir! xoox