One night in Bangkok

Cliché title I know, but what else can you put if you literally have one night in Bangkok?

I join you from a plane 10667 m up, just off the north-western coast of Australia, on the way between Bangkok and Auckland. I swear everyone else on board is asleep and mocking my perpetual inability to sleep on planes. Especially the guy right next to us, who is indulging himself in some loud, wet, gurgly snores. 

I didn't even try to sleep on the first leg, Brussels to Bangkok - we left at 1.15 pm and arrived just before midnight, Brussels time (6 am Bangkok time), so I knew there was no hope of that. I was more optimistic this leg, since we left at 6.45 pm, but 6 hours later, the only sign of sleepiness I've had was while we were waiting for them to take away the dinner trays. As soon as they did, and I could actually theoretically lie back (well, perform a token incline) and relax, I was wide awake again.

Anyway, one night in Bangkok, or 36 hours in Bangkok to be precise. Everything went smoothly with our arrival. I had the bright idea of leaving our large suitcases in the airport left luggage, so we didn't have to bother hauling them back and forth. Less than 10 euros and a few minutes later, we were disencumbered and on our way on the train into the centre. It was all a lot less daunting and confusing than I had anticipated, and we even managed the 10-minute walk from the train station to our hotel with only minor stress and major sweat. 

It was so hot in Bangkok. When I saw the forecast was for 33 degrees, I knew it would be hot, particularly coming from 2 degree Brussels, but the humidity was killer. Every time we went three steps out of the hotel, we were absolutely dripping with sweat. 

So as you can imagine, first step when getting to the hotel was a shower, and then bed. We had booked for the night before, so we were able to go straight in when we arrived around 7:30. We managed a disciplined 3 1/2 hours sleep or so and dutifully peeled ourselves back out of bed at 12 to try to not get too messed up with jetlag and have some time to see the city.

The plan for day 1 was deliberately low-key, by which I mean a two-hour massage - Thai style, hot oil and with some sort of heated bag thing (?) Whatever it was, it was pretty good. Favourably compares to the last massage I had in Marrakesh, which I realise was over a year ago! We were warned that the massage would be medium intensity, strong at time, and it did have its moments which bordered on painful. Some spots I barely even knew I had muscles, let alone tight muscles, but they do a good job squirrelling out any trouble spots and then elbowing you hard in them. 

After the massage, suitably relaxed, other than my general awkwardness over how much and how to tip, and also what to do with the disposable (I hope disposable) G-string I had to wear), we took a taxi to Chinatown (Yaowarat Road) to feast on some street food. (Actually, I forgot, we also ate lunch at a weird canteen-type place down a back alley, which was good if liable to make a health inspector faint.) By the time we crawled there painfully slowly through Bangkok traffic, with me regretting at every moment that I hadn't gone to the loo in the spa, and wondering if the traffic was going slowly enough for me to leap from the cab, find a loo, and come back again before losing Jules in the city, it was around 6 pm and getting dark. 

A sample of Bangkok traffic

It wasn't quite as "market-y" as I had been hoping, but Chinatown was a pretty good place to experience the hustle and bustle of the city and get a vibe of the energy in such a huge, crazy metropolis. It was pretty crowded and touristy, but there still felt like there was a certain authenticity in the stalls serving up simple dishes in, again, pretty terrible hygiene conditions. We just went for it and ate everything from meat on a stick, to dumplings, to pork noodles to spring rolls. I'm usually blessed with a pretty cast iron stomach, and thankfully it hasn't let me down (yet). Seeing the meat just sitting out with no refrigeration, and the cooks just chucking in meat, noodles, veg etc. with their hands might trouble the delicate, but we are made of sterner stuff :) I did draw the line at seafood, however, and neither of us was up for the much-advertised shark fins, bird's nest soup or durian. This latter was being hacked up on the street - I can say it did have an unusual overly sweet, verging on rotten, smell, but, at least at a safe distance, it wasn't nearly as fearsome as reputation has it. When we were checking in for our flight this afternoon we did see a "no durian on board the aircraft" notice though, so I do suppose it must be quite something in confined environments.

Street durian

A cook at work

The fruits of another chef's labours

Yay meat lollipop!

Jules navigates Chinatown

Tuktuk eye view

Our lack of sleep caught up with us after a couple of hours, and we finished off the evening with a tuktuk ride back to our hotel. This was pretty hair-raising, and fun. Jules's side was protected by a chicken-wire grille, but I had nothing keeping me from flying out of the tuktuk should we encounter a particularly sharp bend. That made it all the more fun though, I'm glad we tried it!

Chocomania! A visit to the Neuhaus factory shop

I have been ghosting you again, dear readers. Not much has been going on here, just struggling through the gloom of a Brussels winter. It got cold for a little bit, snowed a tiny amount, and now has gone back to quite warm, but rainy gloom has replaced the frosty sunshine we had in January. And it's still so dark all the time!

But not for much longer... We are almost in the final countdown to the NZ trip, less than two weeks to go. On the one hand, I kind of regret that we will be enduring most of the winter here anyway, but on the other hand, I didn't want to use up such a big chunk of holidays so early in the year, and when we come back, hopefully spring will be here. Plus, NZ in February is much nicer than January. At least, I hope so. Every time I check the weather forecast, it seems to be sunny but with rain predicted for the coming days. Not sure whether that means it has actually been sunny all the time or not...

Couple of quick things before I probably go into hibernation again and then hit you with an unending stream of posts from New Zealand. (Eeeeee!)

Our joint Christmas present to ourselves was a shiny new Magimix food processor. Points to note: my god, it takes up space! I knew the size of the processor itself (we bought online, but had seen it in a shop). What I didn't know was how much room all the blades and other accessories take up! It's true, by the time you fit the blade and clean the machine afterwards, half the time you could have just chopped the carrot yourself, but it's a lot of fun. And we've made some things like pommes de terre dauphinoise or sliced leeks or julienned carrots where I definitely wouldn't get the things as thin or uniform. And it does come into its own when you're making a big batch of whatever. We made soup yesterday with 2 cups each of diced carrot, celery and onion, and that saved a lot of grief. If you have any recipes that require a lot of chopping/slicing, send them my way!

Plus it's so shiny and red, and looking at it gives me a smug middle-class sense of self-satisfaction

About the only other noteworthy thing I've done this year is also food-related (surprise, surprise). I wanted to take some Belgian chocolates back home to friends and family, but the good ones (not cheap and nasty bulk-buy seashells) cost an absolute fortune. Like at least 25€ per box that you see in the photo below. Times it by maybe 10 people and you're looking at a cool 250€. (Geez, thanks for the maths help, Einstein.)

Luckily, I was talking to a colleague who let me in on a little Brussels secret - the Neuhaus factory shop! Neuhaus is already one of my favourites, so I was super excited to visit, especially when I heard you can eat as many free samples as you like. Basically, the boxed chocolates are not so much cheaper than what you get in the retail stores, but the real bargains come in plain, single-variety cardboard cartons. I picked up three kilos of chocolate for 40€.

You can eat as much as you want from the open boxes

And then splash the cash on the plain packaging

As far as I'm aware, the plain boxes aren't "seconds' in the sense of being defective or whatever. We were looking for later expiry dates on the boxes we bought, and they all expired by like the end of April, so I'm guessing that's more the reason why they are in the factory shop. Apart from that (I'll just assume my family will eat their chocolates quickly!) the only downside is that there's only three different varieties of chocolate in the three kilos and I'll have to fiddle around in NZ packing them into individual portions. On the plus side, it will be a lot easier to transport them than the equivalent in 10 different boxes. 

I suppose I've lifted the veil of mystery for anyone who may be reading the blog and also getting chocolates from me, but oh well. I figure most people would rather more chocolates in a less fancy package (and also that I don't bankrupt myself).

We went by car, but apparently you can take the metro to the last stop and walk a short way, so definitely an option if you're ever visiting Brussels. Beware though, we didn't have breakfast, and I would have thought I could eat basically endless quantities of chocolate, but I got sick pretty quickly! If you're coming on a mission, e.g. for the bulk-buy chocolates, make sure you taste those first, because by the end I horrified myself by having to take a bite of different chocolates and then throw the rest away. (A dark day for humanity.)

Gwan's Year in Review - 2015

Can it really be time again for me to reflect on the year that's been? I think it's a fact of getting older that the year seems to fly by but simultaneously it must be going super slow since things we did back in spring seem like half a lifetime ago. Last year was another year of change - new job, new apartment, new country, so this year is...

2015: Finally a bit of stability

That's right, a whole year (and more) in the same job, same city, same apartment. That might not seem a huge achievement, but let's see, since the first time I moved to Europe in 2006, I've lived, at least briefly, in Prague, Moscow, London, Northern France, Chamonix, Wellington, Auckland, Nice, Tours, Metz and Brussels, and I think this is the first and only year since 2012 where I haven't moved at least once. Jules moved in here, and we're planning to move when my lease is up next June, but still. This year at least, I stayed put.

It was a busy year. Before Jules moved here, we aimed more or less to take turns, one weekend in Brussels and one in Luxembourg, so adding in quite a few holidays and long weekends meant that I was fairly frequently home only one weekend of the month or so. Which could be exhausting at times, but kept us out of mischief.

Last year I divided my travels into trips abroad, and "domestic" trips, in which category I included Belgium, France and Luxembourg. This year I can't really count France as a domestic trip any more, which leaves less to work with, so I'll divide it by longer trips and weekend breaks, with a little bonus section for the glories of Belgium.

PS I took literally hours writing this, putting the photos in, all the links etc. and then AFTER I published it I went back to tinker with some of the spacing and so on, and I managed to delete the. whole. thing. And there was no "undo/back", it just went blank, AND I managed to unpublish it as well. Thankfully I found online a tip to go into feedly and pull it off the RSS feed, which worked, but that's why the formatting is wonky. But thank Christ I at least got all the text back. This might be the final straw with me and Blogger though!

Onto the award portion of the review - 

Best proper holiday

• I kicked off the year's travels early, with a trip to Marrakesh, Morroco with my friend Liz in January. My overall impressions of the place were, um, not great. The constant badgering and cat-calling got old pretty fast, and while we saw some nice museumsand palaces and enjoyed some winter sun, there wasn't really any "wow" moment that compensated for the general experience of harassment. It was just after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but I didn't feel unsafe in anything except a gender-based way, but the sad events of the year might make me even less likely to want to visit in future (I know Morocco isn't Tunisia, but honestly there's nothing really coming up in the pro visiting column for me right now). Still, at least I've been there, done that, bought the lamp. 

• We spent Easter at Lake Constance/Bodensee, Germany, via Freiburg and a three-star lunch at the Auberge de l'Ill. Freiburg was super charming, I was sorry we didn't have more time there, but the drive through the Black Forest via Titisee toUberlingen was stunning. While in the area, we saw some beautifully frescoed old churches on a very rainy day on the island of Reichenau and finally got a bit of sunshine in the chocolate-box-cute village of Meersburg. 

• The really big trip of the year was our two weeks in Albania and Macedonia in June/July. Without giving anything away, this really was an amazing trip. I blogged about it at great length, so if you missed anything, start here and there's another dozen or so posts for you to enjoy. There was plenty of history and culture along the way, but what really stuck with me were the stunning landscapes, whether it be the"white city" Berat, stacked up on a hillside (the photo above is an old church on top of the hill), the gorgeous sandy beaches of Himare and Drymades, the Roman ruins of Butrint, the Blue Eye spring, stunning river and mountain vistas on the road toKorce or the amazing red roofs of the lakeside city of Ohrid, Macedonia. All this in a country not (yet) too touched by mass tourism and still as cheap as chips. We loved it.

• After spending the rest of the summer at home, in September we crammed in another longer break with an awesome road-trip to the South-West of France and back. On the way, we drank wine and saw the sights in Beaune, visited the Cathar castles ofCarcassonne, Montségur, Peyrepertuse (pictured above), and Quéribus, saw the picturesque small town of Lagrasse, stopped in at Albi to check out its beautiful and imposing cathedral, drove past and over the viaduct of Millau, and ate a lot in Lyon. If you have only time to do one thing, definitely go see Peyrepertuse. Just look at the amazing views in that photo and imagine how much better it is in real life!

And the winner is...

Not much room for suspense here. Our French roadtrip was great, but we had an absolutely fabulous time in Albania and Ohrid, I really can't recommend it highly enough. Go before everyone else does! On second thoughts, maybe I should keep it as my little secret... Go to Morocco instead ;)

Best short break

• Our first real weekend away of the year was our anniversary trip to Champagne, France in mid-March. We had a Michelin-starred lunch in Reims, enjoyed a spot of light wine-tasting in Hautvillers and again in Epernay and toured the de Castellane domaine. I think my favourite part was taking the scenic route from Reims to Epernay. Almost makes me wish I were the cycling type!

• Our next long weekend wasn't until late May/early June, when we took our traditional annual pilgrimage back to Tours, France for the Vitiloire wine festival. On the way, we took our first trip to the stunning château Chambord, well worth a detour. I feel a bit nostalgic looking back on this trip. My sister has come over, often with friends, several times for the wine festival, and I know she won't be there next year as she's moving back to New Zealand (exciting!) With that and the fact that a lot of my good Tours friends have also moved away (Caro will also be gone in NZ), Vitiloire next year just won't be the same...

• Still, there was some time to catch up with family this year, with not one but two trips to London. I've seen quite a bit of London over the years, but there's always more to explore and revisit - we saw an Escher exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, went to the British Museum, Natural History Museum and the National Gallery, and still had some time for shopping, and most importantly, eating and drinking with family and friends.

• My Tours friends and I, now being scattered throughout Western Europe, try to find the time to catch up together a couple of times a year. This year, Liz, Mel and I met up in Bordeaux in October (how nice to have the convenience of a large airport on my doorstep). Relaxing was higher on the agenda than sight-seeing, but we highly recommend the Maison des Vins where you can taste great wines at a great price in a very salubrious atmosphere - just make sure you come early!

• My last little trip of the year was to Edinburgh, to visit my friend Caro and spend my birthday weekend in style. I loved the shopping, enjoyed the Edinburgh Dungeon and a free walking tour, and had a weekend full of warmth, friendship and laughter. (Dear God.) Couldn't have asked for a nicer birthday, and the weather was even good some of the time!

And the winner is...

This is a tough one! I do love a weekend break, maybe even more than a longer holiday since they can come around more often and bring a special little bit of sunshine to everyday life. I could really name any one of them, but perhaps because it's fresh in my mind I'm going to give the nod to Edinburgh.

Belgian delights

• Remember back when it was cold? I shouldn't jinx things, since the current winter temperatures are about what winter is like back home, and it suits me just fine. But on a very cold and snowy day last December (so, yes, 2014, but after last year's roundup), we visited the Reading Between the Lines church in Borgloon, which I have to mention here because it's such a beautiful spot, it doesn't deserve to fall between the cracks of 2014-15. 

• Sticking close to home, I have to give another Belgian shout-out to the spring delights of the bluebells in the Bois de Halle/Hallerbos and also the famous Royal Greenhouses at Laeken. At Easter, we also stopped by Luxembourg to check out the traditional Easter fair at Nospelt which revolves around clay bird whistles.

• In May, we took a daytrip to Bruges, where unfortunately my suggestion to take the train was unheeded and we got stuck in some awful traffic. We saw some pretty/interesting things at the Memling Museum but overall the impression was: Bruges on a holiday weekend, never again.

• By contrast, somewhere I think is seriously underrated and I'm surprised I haven't been back to yet is Mechelen (Malines). There were so many interesting sights we didn't have time to see in our brief morning visit - the cathedral with its belltower you can climb up, the deportation museum and the De Wit tapestry workshop, to name a few. But the city is also great just to walk around, particularly its floating river walkway and grand place. It's so close to Brussels too - we really have to pick a sunny day sometime soon for a return visit.

• I should have called this "Benelux Delights", as I'm going to sneak a bit ofLuxembourg in here. (Talking of Benelux, we haven't managed a trip to the Netherlands yet, will have to remedy that next year.) We visited the castle ofBourscheid on a beautiful June weekend and were wowed by the stunning views of the surrounding countryside, traveresed by the river Sauer. 

• I'm a very lucky girl, and this year I got to go again to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps. The unpredictable gods of Belgian weather really smiled on us this weekend, and we had the most perfect sunshine to finally see Lewis Hamilton win. Going General Admission was a different experience, one with added stress but also added fun finding different spots to take in all the action.

What's next?

I expect next year's travel will mostly consist of short trips, since Jules is in a new job and can't get a lot of time off. Short trips except, of course, our month+-long sojourn in New Zealand next February/March, which is really coming up right around the corner! I really want to go to Georgia and Armenia, but it's looking like it won't be next year, due to the difficulties in getting time off. I need to get them under the belt in case it goes all war-ry again though - I'm so pleased I went to Ukraine back in 2011, although not so happy that I didn't make it to Crimea. I think a compromise for a shorter-haul trip might turn out to be Iceland.

I got promoted recently, and officially start my new job in January, so that's something to look forward to. And as mentioned, we will probably be apartment-hunting once we get back from New Zealand. My current apartment has been good to me, but it's a wee bit too small for two people, particularly the half-size fridge. Definitely not looking forward to a move, but kind of exciting to start dreaming about our new home.

Hope 2015 has been good to all of you, and I wish everyone a very Happy New Year 2016!

A few loose ends

My first day off work! Next year, I go straight into my new job for six weeks or so, and then a long break in New Zealand - seems just about perfect! First, a few words on stuff I haven't blogged about/follow-ups. Yesterday I actually looked at the stats page of my blog and the post with the most hits over the last week was the last day of my trip to Ukraine in 2011. I ended up looking back through my whole trip and really enjoyed the walk down memory lane. So it's a reminder to keep blogging even if it feels like I'm the only one reading it...

• Edinburgh: One thing I forgot to say last time was how marked the differences were in security between Edinburgh and Brussels. How quickly one gets used to seeing armed police and soldiers everywhere you go! It seemed really strange to me to see the Christmas market, for example, without armed (wo)men standing guard outside. I don't know how I feel about that. As we saw in Paris, it doesn't have to be a big, well-publicised event for it to be targeted. The Sydney siege was in a Lindt chocolate shop of all places. But I suppose it's more about reassuring people they can still go places like the Christmas market and the Grand Place than anything else.

I got a few more photos from other people's cameras - my birthday brownie

I had to take a photo of a photo since I don't have a scanner, so this is not the best quality. I feel I was tricked here because Caro said "let's really go for it with the photo, none of this namby-pamby stuff" and then those two do incredibly photogenic cute little scared faces, and I'm the marauding hell demon next to them

That wasn't my only cake of the weekend. I'm so excited!

Pre-dinner silliness

C&C and our indian feast

• In "look how fancy I am" news, the other week I was invited to a party at an Ambassador's residence! I didn't exactly cover myself in glory while I was there. It was pretty crowded, so while trying to skirt around some people I managed to walk into a massive lampshade and then while trying to fix the shade I had knocked askew, I tipped my (first and undrunk) drink on the floor. That wasn't too bad, I think only the girl right behind me saw. But then the Ambassador came up to us, introduced himself by his first name and asked when the choir was going to perform. I totally didn't recognise him and (politely) said I didn't know, maybe he should ask that guy over there. Then he (nicely) said he was the Ambassador and wandered off. Oops. So this is more "why I shouldn't be invited fancy places". It was fun seeing everyone's party frocks though, and I talked to the Ambassador's wife later, who was very nice.

In Grand Place after the Ambassador's party

A fondue sandwich. What an age we live in!

Jules at the Christmas market

Light show in the Grand Place

Panorama at the Grand Place

• See how I'm not wearing a coat there? I do tend to run hot, but it's definitely unseasonably warm here. The coat has only come out on a couple of occasions, with most days getting into the low teens or at least double digits. It's like winter in Auckland! Way back in October, we even had a day in the beach at Ambleteuse in France. It was sunny and about 16 degrees, we couldn't believe it. I don't know if it's going to suddenly get cold next year, but so far it has been incredibly mild. I still can't believe the photos below are from October in northern France though!

The beach at Ambleteuse

People on the rocks looking for mussels

A feast of wine and local cheese

Catching shrimp and playing with the timelapse function on the iphone

That's about it, just counting down to a few days in Luxembourg for Christmas and then a quiet new year to recharge the batteries. Merry Christmas all!

My Jesus Year

Longer ago than I care to admit, I thought up the title "My Jesus Year" for a post about my 33rd birthday, as a joke probably only I would find funny. (I also came up with the idea of a "double sweet sixteen" party for my 32nd birthday, but I failed to actually realise at the time that I was in fact on the brink of turning 32, so it never happened and we just went out for a quiet dinner instead.) Anyway, 33 as in that's how old Jesus was when he died, har har. And then I found out it's actually a thing, as in the year people decide to "get serious about life", or try to dedicate the year to being more Jesus-y, depending on how religious they are. Technically, since he was crucified part-way through, I think it should be more like a Jesus four months. Anyway, as is probably apparent, I'm not actually going to be doing a Jesus Year, particularly in its more religious form. Possibly I could be like Jesus by drinking more wine though? What I am going to be doing is going to New Zealand for a month (in only two months' time!) and starting a semi-new job (as in, I got a promotion but am staying at my current place of work). Which totally sound like WJWD.

I kicked off 33 (a third of a way to 99!) with a trip to Edinburgh to visit my good friend Caroline, who is incidentally moving to NZ herself soon, so it was the last chance to catch up in this hemisphere for the foreseeable :(

This was the weekend Storm Desmond hit the UK. It wasn't nearly as bad in Edinburgh as it seemed it was in Northern England/Southern Scotland, but it was certainly cold and rainy enough for anyone's liking. There's definitely a charm to winter lights and traditions when it's miserable outside and dark from 4 pm which you don't get somewhere like NZ though, so it's not all bad.

At like 5 pm

We began my birthday with a solid morning of shopping, hurray! And I actually found like 5 dresses and a pair of shoes which fit and looked good, which is something that basically never happens on the Continent, where everything is always too small or unflattering on me or just not my style. Then lunch at Wagamama's and a trip to the Edinburgh Dungeon in the afternoon.

To be honest, I was not expecting great things from the Dungeon. I thought either it would be a pretty dull display of old torture instruments which we've all seen before, or incredibly cheesy. It turned out it was cheesy, but it was done with such a spirit of fun and sort of a nudge and a wink that let you know it didn't take itself too seriously. And it wasn't just pitched at children - I'm not sure there even were any on our tour. It involved going through various rooms and meeting actors who told/reinacted either real stories from Edinburgh's past (think Burke and Hare the bodysnatchers/serial killers) or spooky tales (ghosts, cannibals etc.) mixed in with attempts to spook you (flickering lights, things popping out). There was plenty of audience interaction as well - they seemed particularly keen on picking on poor Jules.

We had a Scottish dinner - I tried haggis, in the form of deep-fried haggis "bonbons". I don't know about the full-on served-in-a-sheep's-stomach version, but this was surprisingly good! It doesn't have the odd texture that turns me off things like boudin noir and just pretty much tastes like a richer kind of mincemeat. I actually ended up having it twice more - once on top of a meat pie (which was soooo good) and once with a "full Scottish" brunch.

The next day, the storm had blown the clouds away and it was beautiful and sunny, although quite cold. We took advantage of this to go on a free walking tour, which again I recommend. Our guide was young and enthusiastic and did a good job of taking us through the history of Edinburgh and Scotland in general, and hitting the highlights around the old town, including the tale of Greyfriars Bobby, which I knew already, but still brought a shameful tear to my eye as he recounted it.

A piper in front of a statue of David Hume and the beautiful St Giles Cathedral

View of the city with the Christmas market Ferris Wheel

Jules in Greyfriars churchyard

More Greyfriars views

At the height of the body snatching epidemic, some people had grates like this installed to protect their loved ones' graves

Me and Greyfriars Bobby, sniff

In the afternoon, we drove to nearby Rosslyn Chapel, of Da Vinci Code fame. I did see the film ages ago, but can't remember whether they show much of the main chapel, or just the crypt. Anyway, it is absolutely covered with amazing stone carvings on every inch. You don't need all the mythology about Templars and so on to marvel at it and enjoy finding the interesting little scenes, plants and beasts carved into the stone.

Outside Rosslyn - it ends with this abrupt wall plus Victorian add-on because they only managed to build half of the original design in the Middle Ages and then just capped off what would have been the central axis with a wall

I managed to sneak one photo inside

It was dark by the time we came out, and lit up in a fetching shade of pink

Sunday finished with an evening at the pub and an amazing Indian feast - and I amazed myself by loving everything we ordered (about 10 small dishes for sharing). I don't like curry, so tend to be somewhat wary when it comes to Indian, but evidently I should be more open-minded. Monday was a quiet day with the aforementioned brunch before getting our plane home.

Well, that's the bare facts of what we did, but it was the company that really made it. It makes such a difference seeing a city with friends who live there, and it was really a wonderful birthday weekend.

Remember those murdering, body-snatching guys? Yeah, they named a strip club after them. You couldn't make it up.