Portuguese dinner

As Andreia mentioned in the previous post, the next couple of weeks are going to be quite hectic for both of us. For one reason or another, we won't be having that many free weekends to be with our friends any time soon.

That, as any other motive, was a good reason to gather a couple of good friends at our place Saturday night. Since we were missing Portuguese food so much, we decide to have cod fish has the main dish for the dinner. We cooked it in 2 different ways: Bacalhau com Natas (Cod fish with cream - left pic) and Bacalhau a Braz (Cod fish, Braz stile - LOL - right pic).


Delicious, Awesome,truly Portugal. It was so so great to eat this delicacy of the Portuguesee cuisine. Supimpa :-)

Everyone loved it and now we even have requests for recipes and cooking classes eheheh Cuisine Masters strike again ;-) It's great to have people around and spend some time with your friends. After all, that's the most valuable thing you can take with you. Until next time ;-)

PS: The dinner was so good that even Anti-fish lobbyist Volodi ate some and loved it ;-)
PS2: Can't wait for Hungary.

The World is a book...

"The World is a book, and those who
do not travel, read only a page."
Saint Augustine

One of this year resolutions is to re-start traveling again... after a year were most of our flights were between Bonn and Lisbon, we decided to target some countries and start booking the flights!

Next weekend we will be heading to Budapest for a short 2 days visit, as I (Andreia) need to go there for a business meeting on Monday.

In February, we will travel separately as Goncalo will go to Amsterfoort and then Prague (unfortunately for a meeting on a Wednesday) and I will go to Amsterdam and Bucharest. However, the highlight of this month will definitely be the visit of our parents to Brussels. A lot of preparation is already in place for that big event.

And in March... a well deserved romantic weekend in Dublin!!! Going to Ireland has been a long lasting wish of Goncalo and we finally decided to go ahead.

Let's see what the rest of the year reserves for us but looking to the number of wedding we were invited so far, it appears that it will be full of new countries and cultures to discover!

We just can't wait to start flying now...

There is nothing like a good chess game...

Ended up in a tie though...We will need to have a re-match sometime soon ;-)

Finally... some pictures of our house!

After some requests, we have finally decided to share with you some pictures of our small place in Brussels, where you are more than welcome to visit us!

Let us take you on a tour through our house:


The most charming living room in the surrondings...


The kitchen of the chef's...


Our small office...


And the bedroom... :)

Sceneries of the trip...as promissed

Some of the things that impressed us most were the wonderful sceneries that we could observe while traveling "the road less traveled". Here are a couple of pics to show just that.


Bouillon


On the way to Rochefort


Dinant


Vianden

Capturing (...) - Bouillon and getting back to Brussels

Bouillon, the second highlight of our trip. Yet again another castle, but probably the best castle I have seen in my life. Why?

well, If you remember the castles you normally see, it almost seems that everyone (literal) lived in a 5 star hotel so tidy the place seems to be. You get a glimpse of how the monarchs live but you don't really see capture how the people lived in those days. Well, that is the idea that I was pleasantly surprise to see fought by the castle in Bouillon.
Here you get to see all the dungeons (how they really were), all the places were the common citizen slept, where the prisoners were kept. It really takes back through time and fills your imagination completely. Really something that I recommend anyone to visit. As you can see, it has an amazing view over the city. It must have been a treat to defend this castle a couple of centuries ago.

After Bouillon, we decided to spend the rest of the day slowly strolling the national roads of Belgium towards our final destination: Brussels. That my friends (the decision to go through the road less traveled), was clearly one (if not the best) of our decisions throughout that weekend. We saw so many incredible villages, cities, sceneries that otherwise would be lost if we had decided to take the highways. Truly a decision that I recommend to everyone who wants to really get to know this country....But the sceneries will be kept for a completely different posting.

Anyways, after Bouillon came Rochefort (amazing lunch, delicious) and after Rochefort came Dinant with its inponent cathedral, hidden away in the rocks. Solid as rocks are the Dinant traditional honey cookies, but we let that one for yourself to figure out whenever you go there. Check out the picture.

Dinant was the last city where we made a stop over. After that it was just a stroll through the national roads of Belgium towards Brussels. Namur was on the way but by them we had no time to stop even for a second.

As a summary this was an incredible and unforgetable trip. 3 wonderful days discovering together Belgium and Luxembourg. Of course that are many places where we would like to have stayed there for a couple of days. For this time it was not possible but for a next time there are definitely a lot of places that we will want to revisit.

A big kiss/hug to everyone,

Andreia & Goncalo

Capturing (...) - final moments in Lux and arriving at Bouillon

After a sumptuous breakfast in Viaden, we hit the road once again. Before reaching Bouillon (already back into Belgium territory), we spent some time still in Echternach (smaill city also close to the border with Germany) and the City of Luxembour itself.

Echternach was once again a very nice city. Like all the other places we went through, it's tidy with everything in the right place in order to make any tourist feel right at home. For that matter, almost everything in Luxembourg is treated like a tourist attraction. Here we found this cool ancient mean of transportation and took this picture...

After a not so quick snack in Echternach (the service was bloody slow), we started driving towards the city of Luxembourg. We arrived there towards the end of the afternoon which was a bit of a bummer because everything worth while was almost closing (or it was closed due to the Winter break) and we could only really enjoy the sight seeing (which was still worth while, just to show you how beautiful the city is...I will do a separate posting concerning sights, which were unforgetable during the whole trip).

In Luxembour city there is another event that is worth mentioning and that goes to show you how the world is a small place. Andreia and me were going throught the streets of the city where out of the blue we see this girl "screaming"at us:"you're from AIESEC, You're from AIESEC". Indeed we were/are. It was Silvia, that was on the EB of AIESEC Porto Portucalente during one of the terms where I was President of AIESEC ISCTE. Go figure :-) After this encounter, we started our trip towards Bouillon, back into Belgium territory.

Here is just a highlight of this magnificent city.

Capturing the rest of our Belgium and Luxembour trip - I

Yes, you are right. We have been too laisy to update this blog. Nevertheless, we are back and you can consider this post as part of our New Year resolution to be back into the blogging mood.

So what happened in the rest of our tour through the French part of Belgium and Luxembourg.

Looking back at the trip, Spa was probably the place where we spent less time. I guess due to the fact that we didn't anything straight away to visit and that as far as we understood, most of the turistic places were closed due to the winter break. Only highlight of this part of the trip were the 5 euros we wasted in the local casino (although I have to say we battled the damn machine for a while).

We then decided to drive through the night until our next destination (Viaden), already in Luxembourg. And in good time we took that decision because this was clearly one of the highlights of our trip. Embedded in the splendid landscape of the Ardennes, Vianden is an amazing place where one can spend a couple of days. Although they promote a lot the fact that Victor Hugo spent there some time (only 3 months though), the city highlights are clearly the gothic churches, the ramparts and fortified towers of the small medieval town, dominated by the magnificent, restored castle and its simply amazing food (great yaar, great) ;-)



Viaden is also a vivid example that you can find portuguese people in every corner of the world. Here we even found a portuguese tradicional dance group.

First half of day one...

Now it's my turn.

We started the day in Diest, still in the Flemish part of Belgium. Since it was a holiday (11 of November), most of the sites that were worth visiting were closed, but we still manage to a very nice park, a monument to both war heroes, someone receiving a medal for theirs (or their parents contribution in the same war).


Since it was a special holiday, we saw Belgium flags in almost all windows.

After a Huistmeister (never know how to write it, but it's the Flemish dish with ham, 2 eggs, slices of bread, cheese....yeap, that's the one....You're clever) and a beer in one of the local bars, we started driving to our next stop, Tongeren .

Tongeren is a very nice city still in the Flemish part of Belgium. There were 2 things that we particularly liked in this city and that we remember front the time we spent there.

One was this peculiar water fountain. I laugh out loud with this "peace of art".I think it speaks pretty much for itself, don't you think?



The second highlight is the Basilica of Our Lady. That church has stood on that site for at least 1200 years. In 1999 they started an excavation project that is expected to be finished only in 2009. What you see in this picture is the result of the second stage which is strapping the entire central section and it's showing graves and religious artifacts that can be traced back to the 8th century. Very cool stuff :-)



Don't miss in the next posting about Spa, the adventures in finding our way all the way through Viaden in Luxemburg and all the cool stuff we found out when we arrive there. It was a pretty fast track weekend but was definitely the best way to have a good idea of this part of Belgium and get to know the small cities that you never know in your normal weekend trips.

Belux weekend - How it all started

To start this blog, here is a short tale about the 3 days that both of us spent traveling around the French part of Belgium and Luxembourg.

Our idea, when we departed, was to see some of the more traditional and ancient cities of Wallonia and Luxembourg. We set ourselves the goal to visit: Diest, Tongeren, Spa, Vianden (Lux), Etternack, City of Luxembourg, Bouilon, Roquefort, Dinant, quick stroll through Namur and back to Brussels.

This was our Ferrari:

Welcome to our blog

Welcome to our blog.

Our idea for this blog is to use this blog to keep in touch with all our friends that are spreaded around the world and share with you some episodes of our life in Brussels and some of the many pictures that we take in the trips we do around Belgium, Portugal and other parts of the world.

See you around,

Andreia & Goncalo