Belgium (and a Day in the Netherlands)

Fun Facts about Belgium:
1 in every 12 people works for an American company
The saxophone was invented by Mr. Sax
The duffle bag was invented in town called Duffle
A Belgian company just bought Budweiser the other morning (52 billion, I think), making it the largest beer company in the world
There are 3 US military cemeteries from WW1; the Belgians sometimes adopt graves to take care of
The government is perpetually close to collapsing because of the divide between the French-speaking south and Flemish-speaking north and economic/cultural issues related to that. Brussels, the capitol of the EU and NATO, is in the middle. The Prime Minister tried to resign a few days ago because he couldn't find a solution, but the king didn't allow it. If it were to divide, it would likely influence northern Italy, Catalonia (in Spain), and Scotland, all of which have similar problems.

I went to the Diamond Museum the first day. It had a few replicas (which I don't think were even real stones because they were supposedly the largest or only of its kind) but a lot of nice jewelry. I like looking at sparkly things. They didn't allow cameras, though.
Church of Our Lady that housed 4 (of the more famous) Reubens paintings. I noticed on the train and bus rides that even the small towns we passed by have very impressive churches!
I ate a wonderfully delicious Belgian waffle, complete with whipped cream, strawberries, and chocolate, and it definitely topped any waffles we make in America! (Sorry, Waffle House. I still love you.) I didn't get a chance to have an Belgian fries (Belgium is actually where french fries were invented.) but they come smothered in mayonnaise and according to my friends, nothing spectacular. The chocolate, on the other hand, lives up to its reputation! I didn't buy any for myself; they gave us a few free pieces before the bike ride in the Ardennes. The last day I bought a box for the family, and I already told Mom this but it's a testament to how much I love them that it will go uneaten!
The bike ride was nice. At least, the countryside that we rode through was nice. I won't be able to show any pictures because we hardly stopped for breaks and were going much too fast to take any proper photos! I'm not horribly out of shape, but I've been getting sick for the past week or so (flu-ish bug, going around the ship) and I'm just not used to not being able to go at my own pace. Summary: It was painful. Plus, the other guy in the back and I got lost because the group turned and went over a hill (Bad outdoorsmanship! One of the first rules of any kind of outdoor sport is always wait for the group at crossroads/forks!) so we got to bike a lot extra while the group waited for us to eventually find them. I also fell over about five minutes before the end and have a big (6x2ish") bruise on my calf and my other knee is scraped up. It's probably a good thing that my parents never let me bike to school! I'm not very good at it. After the bike ride, we got lunch at a fancy pants restaurant (in all our biking clothes!) which was, of course, amazing. I can't praise Belgian food enough! The town, Oudenaarde, was famous for tapestries a few centuries ago, and still has them on display in the church.
The next day I went to Amsterdam by myself, meaning to meet up with my friends, but I'm dyslexic sometimes and I read Jeana's phone number wrong (multiple times) so I never saw them. I wandered around on my own for awhile (In the daytime! No worries, it was perfectly safe.) and then found a SAS group and hung out with them and went to the Anne Frank house. It was really neat being able to go into her room and see the place where her family actually hid. Since I couldn't find my friends, I didn't end up spending the night, so there wasn't time for the Van Gogh museum or Dappermarkt, which is a really big open air market that National Geographic ranked highly. Even though I wanted to see those places, Amsterdam isn't high on my list of places to go back to. It wasn't very clean and was very geared toward the "nightlife" (which was going on at all hours, including 2 in the afternoon!). It did have wonderful pancakes though! (Crepe-like, but much much thicker, with perfectly sweet-but-not-artificially-so syrup!)
The last day I mostly walked around and looked into expensive shops. Antwerp is one of the famous fashion cities, so there were lots of things to look at!

We have 5 whole days on board before Italy. I'm going to be so bored so send me fun emails! (I'll actually have a lot of work to do, but emails are nice regardless!)