July 1999
No more crevettes!
Belgium was my first trip off of the North American continent. Little did I know that this would be the start of something great. My love of travel.
My trip to Belgium was a work trip with many hours spent in the classroom teaching. However, my co-workers and I arrived a few days early to do some set-up and we were able to see some of the sites while we were there.
We ended up staying near the Grand Place in Brussels. This was my first experience of old-world architecture. I was in complete awe.
…and one cannot visit Brussels without visiting the famous Manneken Pis statue! He’s much smaller than I imagined and sort of tucked away on a side street. He’s pretty easy to miss if you aren’t looking for him.
The weekend we arrived to do set-up, we spent the afternoons visiting nearby Bruges and Ooestende. From what I hear, Bruges has become completely overrun with tourists so I’m glad I was able to experience it while it still had its small town charm.
Our class was held in La Hulpe Belgium; which is a quaint little town just outside of Brussels. I still have flash backs of all of us crammed into our rental car going around the round-abouts so fast that one time we lost a hub-cap! We laughed about that for months!
It was a beautiful campus. I loved going out on our breaks just to admire the sites. Also, I remember being completely SHOCKED that they served alcohol at lunch and many folks enjoyed a glass of wine or beer with their lunch. For the most part, class seemed to go very well – with a few exceptions…
I believe this trip also was the start of my love of food. The food scene was so electric. I tried so many different types of seafood on this trip that I had never had before. This is where I had Moules-frites (mussels with french fries) for the first time and I could not get enough of them. To this day, I love them still! I also discovered European chocolate; which has forever ruined me for traditional American chocolate like Hersheys.
One thing I will never forget was the exorbitant amounts crevettes; which are the tiniest little shrimp you’ve ever seen. They were everywhere! By the end of the trip I didn’t want to see another crevette. This was also the first time I had ever seen shrimp (prawns) with their heads still on. I very vividly remember my boss cutting off the heads for me and putting them under a napkin so I wouldn’t have to look at them. My how times have changed. Now, I will try almost anything at least once and can stare down the head of anything on my plate with no remorse.
Click here for the full size gallery.
Sorry for the bad quality of the photos, but these photos were taken with one of the first digital cameras that came out on the market.