ANTWERP!!

The following morning we woke up and readied ourselves for a day in Antwerp. Again, it was very rainy and cold! But that is why we brought our rainjackets...right?! :) We got to Antwerp and were very excited that the boys gaves us directions and a map--since we always manage to get lost! And plus, Antwerp is their home town so they know their way around! We went to the first big circle on the map, the largest gothic catherdral in Europe. It was, in fact, very large, but it was undergoing restoration so it was a bit of a mess. There were a couple of paintings by Ruebens (a famous Belgian artist) and a ginormous organ!
After leaving the cathedral, we headed for an art museum which was the next place the boys recommended. But neither of us are huge Ruebens fans, so we refrained from entering and instead headed for the fashion museum. That was definitely interesting! There wasn't much there that a person would actually wear, but all of the pieces had very cool concepts.
After that, we headed to the next museum the boys had circled on our handy map, but on the way there it started dumping rain on us...so we quickly turned around and said..."hmm, next time! :)" On our way back we spotted an internet cafe, so we took shelter there and wrote a couple of quick e-mails.
The weather put a damper on our day, so we decided to just head home, but not before a car went speeding past us, hit a puddle and in turn, soaked us! At this point, all we could do was to laugh and laugh!
We came back to Ghent and tried to check out the Gravensteen Castle, but we missed the last tour by 5 minutes. ....Back to the house we went, Thomas made us a delicious 3 course meal and we continued to test out more Belgian beer. They have sooo many!
Luckily, the weather cleared late in the evening and we all went out to Overpoort, which is lined with bars and is where all the college students go to par-tay :) The street was blocked off to cars at night because it gets so crowded with bar hopping students. They don't get the party started til about 1 am in Belgium, so Katie was really dragging. We started at a jazz bar, then wandered to a really packed bar (definitely breaking the maximum occupancy laws) that they call "peanuts" but it is spelled like the math symbol "pi"- nuts. Weird, but a good time! These europeans really love their extremely loud techno music!
Katie was really tired and wanted to go home after we left Peanuts(after all it was 3:30 in the morning) but everyone convinced her to stay. We went to one or two more bars then us girls decided to call it a night around 5 am! The boys stayed out late...and we don't know what time they got home...we think the sun was starting to rise though!!!!
We decided going out in Ghent is really a task! Being that it is about 45 degrees fahrenheit outside and the bars are about 80-90 degrees!!! So you are constantly putting on and peeling off layers of clothing. And during this process, Nicole managed to lose one of her layers...but its ok because now she just has one less thing to carry with her the rest of the trip! :)
Next city to conquer: Brussels!