Tours and Belgium

The following weekend (the 3rd of the program) my parents, brother, and my brother´s girlfriend (betty) came to france. they had been in paris for a bit and then came to Nantes to visit me. They took me and some of my friends out to dinner and we´re excited to see where i had been studying. That weekend we rented a car and drove through the Loire valley. This is the famous valley of the chateaus and we saw 4 of them. Including the one that inspired sleeping beauty and the beauty and the beast. It was nice to have a relaxing weekend where i could go to bed early and sleep in. That sunday I took a train to belgium. For part of our program, we were spending three days in Brussels seeing various parts of the European Union. I had been to brussels before, but it was a long time ago. The hotel we were all staying in was very nice and in a good location.

The first night we were was the 4th of july. needless to say, we needed to celebrate. there were about 50 americans staying at the hotel in brussels and almost all of us ended up at the same bar that night. it was called delirium (i think) and had over 2,000 beers and a very cool atmosphere. they played lots of american music for us to sing along to, and i´m pretty sure most people that weren´t american there hated us, but oh well. all in the name of ´¨murrica.

I could tell  you about what we did during the day (the european comission, council and parliament) but honestly i don´t remember much because it was all so boring (sorry EU). Overall it was a fun week and nice to have classes outside of Nantes, but i didn´t really learn much about the EU, which was probably the intended purpose.

Wednesday night we took a flight to barcelona and will be here until sunday. So far we´ve shopped, went to the beach, and had an authentic spanish meal complete with sangria. Today we´re going to la sagrada familia and to see the barcelona stadium. (and hopefully some more beach time!) I´ll update more on sunday when i get home and finally upload pics to facebook!