Part 2: New Years Eve in Gent

NYE morning started quite miserably for some. I was fine, but I can't say much for the guys. We were all awoken at 8:30 in the morning by Myriam knocking on our door cheerfully calling "good morgennn" - bringing a tray of breakfast for us. She was greeted by ....a  rather unhappy "muh??...good...moor...gen..."

I was feeling fine though and so was Angela mainly and so we got up to eat our giant pile of bread and cheese. Yep, MORE CHEESE. (sorry Erin) Steven joined us shortly after but the fourth of our party stayed in bed. I later learnt there had been some puke-age through the night and later on in the morning too....  That aside, I took a few photos in the kitchen and of the food!

After everyone was up, we went for a very long walk and exploration of the city. I'd somehow managed to crank my neck really badly and so was a little uncomfortable all day and had to constantly resist wanting to look up at buildings or left, or right... and at times, straight ahead. There was so much to see and it was really hard!!!!

We got quite tired and decided to spend some time finding a very nice restaurant to have our last dinner of the year at. We were all completely pooped from the night before, we ended up deciding to go for a nice, relaxed end to the year rather than a repeat of the night before. We walked around for so long, and eventually, found this spanish restaurant, hidden away on it's own in a little alleyway. Honestly, so cute!

Notice how the doorways are heaps quirky? The entrance, is like a sorta quarter circle shape, and has a heavy animal skin curtain covering it and the other one looks like it was randomly knocked down to make room so the waitresses could get in and out.

We were in a spanish restaurant, so I felt it fitting to get some Sangria!

We had some interesting appetisers which consisted of some cured meats, spanish bruschetta (which is the pastey thing on the croutons (really yummy and no bits falling off yay!) and....sheep cheese! (it's covered by the prosciutto like meat). I had never tried sheep cheese. It was interesting....

Again, being in Spanish restaurant, I decided to order Tapas and try the mussels. They had a special where I could pick three different tapas and it would be served to me on the same plate as a main. My choices were calamari, mushrooms and mussells and I was decidedly worried that this would not be enough food....

I was wrong.

AMAZING.

Seriously. AMAZING.

OKKKK! Stop talking about food? Yeah, I thought so.

If your question is, does Belgium do fireworks? The answer is, YES! Now, Amsterdam has an interesting way of doing fireworks, I was told. Basically, you can buy fireworks. It is legal and so everyone buys them, spending like 60 million a year on fireworks, and everyone goes out on the streets and lights them. It is basically the night where the city turns into a shambles, fireworks everywhere! People losing fingers, houses burn down...and the city is a com-pleeete mess the next morning! No joke. It is meant to be ridiculous.

Well, I was a bit disappointed to miss that crazy shambles of a New Year but Belgium, turns out, also does the same thing, on a smaller scale but still...everywhere you could hear fireworks going off from half an hour before midnight. And some were actually really quite impressive. As the clock counted down to midnight, we had taken our place at the river...and it had a view of a good portion of the city, and we could see fireworks on the left on the right, behind us, behind the buildings, beyond the trees. EVERYWHERE! People were also lighting lanterns which fly in the air. And they were in the sky. The sound was crazy cause it was just so many noises banging from everywhere - as midnight hit, the official fireworks started - AMONGST ALL THE OTHER FIREWORKS which were let off! Far out. It was pretty craaaazy! Impossible to get a photo... I did try and take a video on my SLR but it ran out.....I did take a lot of photos during the day, oops. Either way, it was pretty cool :D

Sure, Sydney's fireworks are choreographed to music and super co-ordinated....but why would you want that when you can have absolute chaos from all directions, fireworks everywhere being let off by whoever to the sound of a cacophany of bang - wheee- ba- baaaa -bang -wheee wheeee and the clocks all chiming away with the crowd cheering. Definitely a cool way to bring in the new year! If only the phone lines in Belgium had held up... but hey, it's the same in Australia. Impossible with everyone texting their midnight messages! I couldn't even get a message through! CRAZY STUFF!!!!!!

So here's one of the videos I took of the fireworks when they first sorta started before my camera ran out of battery. You'll get a few crackers from around I think a minute and a bit in... but yea hopefully that'll give you an idea of what it was like.

Well, anyhow, that is the brief rundown of everything in Gent! Hopefully it's not too dull. I'm pretty tired from the busy weekend so I'm quite ready for bed. My neck is still being stupid and sore so hopefully it won't fall off cause that won't look so nice in photos on this blog. We shall see. I'm going to be decidedly more free over the next few days as it is my last few before I'm off so if you wanna catch me on skype. This is a good week to do so :D

Hope you guys all had a great new year!!!!!!!! And thanks for reading. It is you guys who keep me writing.