After a rough night and slow moving morning getting out of the apartment for the day, Michelle and I finally walked downtown around noon. We were the only two left in Antwerp for the day from our group (some people went to Amsterdam and the rest went to Brugge up by the coast). We stayed back to shop and visit the zoo and explore more of downtown. We found a little restaurant right in the heart of downtown. It was a deli place with wraps, salads, pasta and very good fresh juice! After lunch we walked around in and out of shops on the main shopping strip. It was gorgeous out today! 75 and sunny all day so we finally got a little bit of color! We stopped in a few of the cell phone shops to try and get some of the cell phone issues we are having with texting over here figured out. Imagine a cell store much like Verizon in the USA, chaotic and busy and add the problem of not speaking the correct language and you have one headache of a time trying to figure out cell phone stuff here. I did not get much resolved so we decided to continue to shop.

After a bit, we made our way to the Zoo and bought a day pass for their. I have not been to the zoo in a while so it was a lot of fun. It is a very nice zoo with a lot of cool animals. I think they try and cross random animals to see what kind of sweet or weird things they can breed. They had half beaver/half rats there that were really gross. I spent most of the time watching the monkeys once I figured out where they were and penguins because they are my favorite and are super entertaining to watch. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon wandering around their before heading back to our apartment.

We picked up our grocery bags at our apartment once we got back because here they charge you for your bags no matter what so you have to keep brining your bags back to take your groceries home. We grabbed a few things for dinner and to get us through until we leave for Ireland on Wednesday. Around 8:00 the crew that went to Brugge (Lindsey, Kyle, Scott, Amy, Kailee, Adam) got back and brought their dinner to our place to hang out here and eat for a bit. A few of us, the ones that were not feeling the effects of last night still trickled out to the main strip and walked around to find a fun place to have a drink at outside. After that we ended up back near the University at Barracuda Bar. Just got home and I am pretty tired, It is 1:15am so I am off to bed! I will upload zoo pictures and the rest of the pictures from the weekend tomorrow!