Belgium and Étretat

This past weekend 7 other students and I went to Brussels, Belgium. We had a good time going around the city and visiting some of their most famous monuments, the Mannekis Pis (fountain of a peeing boy by Grand Place, not sure why it's so famous) and the Atomium. The Atomium was built for the 1958 World Expo, the first world expo after WW2. It's over 800 meters tall and is constructed to look like an atom (9 balls connected by tubes, making it look like an atom. However, any good scientist would know that deserve the nobel prize for this one: the central molecule has 8 others connected to it... an impossibility in the world of chemistry.... ok, science dorkiness ends here, promise!)

Overall we had a nice trip. We were saddened to learn that the "Belgium waffles" that we're used to are really a dessert food, not breakfast. This led to 2 mornings of searching for breakfast waffles that didn't exist... whoops! The dessert waffles... amazing, definitely worth the exploring.

Étretat
This is my second time on this Rouen, France trips. One of the great improvements of this trip to the last one is the day trips. The one we went on today was incredible! We went to Étretat, a beach in Haute-Normandy north of Le Havre. It's famous for it's cliffs and the natural arches in the cliffs and bright blue water. Instead of sand, like Dieppe, this was a pebble beach. It hurt walking on the beach, but it was definitely worth it. Liz and I ran into the crisp water (definitely MUCH colder than the GOT, but still nice) and I swam around for most of the afternoon. Daren, Emerald, Kyrie and I all swam over the cliffs to check out a cave and continued swimming out to the big arch. Unfortunately the current was a bit strong so we were unable to swim all the way over to the "private beach" that we found, but we had a long, fun swim nonetheless, and got to explore a tunnel and more of the cliffs from a view most people don't venture out to see. Good times all around. Everyday should be an Étretat day ;)

In the morning we have class (yay Protagoras!) <-hint of sarcasm there... and then we're heading off to Giverny, la maison de Claude Monet! :) <-real excitement there

Bonne nuit!
<3 Lisa