1st Day [28 Nov 2008] : KLIA -> Antwerp

Visited : Our Lady Cathedral, Shopping street

Our flight from KLIA was at 11.45pm on 27th of November.
Dad booked a taxi to pick us up at 9pm. :)
I initially thought of wearing my long wig to Europe but after attempting to wear it, I remembered that it was a REALLY long flight from KL to Antwerp. Keeping your head suffocated for such a long time would pretty much feel..uneasy? I wanted to have a comfortable journey.. soo.. I kept my hair at home instead.heh.

While we were at home, we're like "oh yeah! we are NOT gonna sleep in the plane! we're gonna watch tv, talk and be all excited 'till we arrive"

This is what REALLY happened :

In the plane, I was asleep but not asleep. Geddit?
It's like..I DIDN'T sleep, but when I opened my eyes, about an hour or two have passed by.
It was pretty tiring...plus, the air in the plane was really dry..I was constantly drinking water. I think I drank a whole tank of water. *yawns & streches* =/

Food kinda sucked though. The Royal Dutch airlines was o-kay but I'd prefer MAS and I am NOT being biased. It's just that, we used MAS when we went to Japan last year and seriously, the food, the chairs, the movies, the songs....basically EVERYTHING was better. The Royal Dutch plane was big..but...blegh.

We arrived in Amsterdam at about 6am+ (their time).
And that's a picture of me drinking water...AGAIN.
Drink and pee drink and pee drink and pee. What a boring cycle.

From Amsterdam we had to take an interchange flight to Brussels. We took this really cute small plane and the flight took only about an hour. From Brussels, we took a cab to Antwerp..where my mom is at.

That's me standing at the entrance of the apartment. haha.
Note the sports shoe in red and white.
It's because of THOSE shoes I did not take alot of pictures on the first day until I purchased my boots because those shoes were hideous when it was paired up with my winter clothes. Seriously, I am so not exaggerating.

I looked at myself in the mirror..and I was like "oh yeah, I like this"
But the moment I look down at my SHOES, I'm all "%(*&@#$*(&*(@#$"

MOVING ON!
I took a quick shower in the apartment and we started our journey around Brussels!
(me and my sisters shared an apartment while my parents had an apartment on their own. For your info, every single hotel we stayed in Europe were in such orders as well because people there do not believe in 5 people sharing a room. Unlike Malaysia where we can squeeze 20 people into a small Genting room).

The first place we visited was "Our Lady Cathedral".
I was very excited because it would be my first time seeing a real big cathedral which is hundreds of years old. It's nothing like the cathedrals in Malaysia.

Everything within the cathedral were so intricately designed, it makes you wonder how did they do it??

Oh yeah, maybe I should blog about the very "zha dou" scene which happened in the cathedral while we were purchasing the entrace tickets.
I wanted to take the camera out to snap some pictures but I totally forgot I was wearing the leather gloves.
The poor camera slipped right out of my fingers and dropped on the floor with a loud THUD.
My heart dropped with the camera because I just bought it less than a month ago for this trip.

The moment it dropped I yelled "SHIT!!"
dad said "shit"
mom said "shit"

Sisters said "sssshhhhhhh!!"

The shit word kinda echoed down the halls while the man at the ticketing booth stared at us with flaring eyes.

And then I remembered, we are in a CHURCH~! ops.
Oh, and thank God my camera was fine. No scratches whatsoever. =)

Anyway, the moment we entered after giving them our entrance tickets, we saw these beautiful high ceiling arches all around. I was awed, amazed and touched at the same time that people in those days would spend their time, effort and resources to create such a marvelous structure for God. And this, was just the first cathedral I visited. It would just keep getting better and better. Each more magnificent than the first.

This is the side view of the place where the priest would stand and preach on the days where there's a mass.

I realised that other than the main hall, there are plenty of other small-halls around the cathedral where people in those days could spend some quiet time to pray alone.

This was made in honour to mother Mary.
It's also considered as one of the "small-halls" although it didn't look so small to me.

There were many other parts of the cathedral which I chose not to post because blogs tend to lag when there's an overload of photos. =/

After visiting the cathedral we proceeded to the shopping street..or should I say shopping streets? because..everywhere you turn, there would be a whole row of shops. It was pretty exciting for me because I love shopping.

Shopping+cool weather+beautiful buildings?
Now, that's like heaven on earth.

This happened to be a museum once upon a time..and is now converted into a shopping mall. The white shape on the right side of the picture changes its colour every now and then. It's a bar by the way.


A cafe which looks like it's on a champagne glass. Isn't it just soo prettyy? :)

Here's a pic of the partial street we were walking in.
I bought two pairs of boots from a shop somewhere around the street. hehe. =D

After the whole shopping thingie, we stopped by an Itallian restaurant for dinner before heading back home.
The guy who ownes the restaraunt was from Venice.
He placed his hand on my shoulder and said "aahh..youu japaneeese?" with his Italian slang.
I said "ah..no? I'm Chinese"

That was a start.