belgium was lovely. good weather, free bike rental from the hotel, extravagant breakfast included in the price of the hotel. after belgium was car rental in lille, then drive to normandy, then dinan in brittany, and now amboise, france, in the loire valley. home to amazing white wine and internet cafes. we've rented a little cabin home from a b&b and the woman who runs the place is american. funny, as my dad said, first rude person we've met so far in europe is an american. my aunt and i took the train to alleviate some squish in the car. when we arrived at the b&b, i said in french, hi, my name is N and my uncle made a reservation to stay here. rude woman cut me off and said, i'm american, it's a waste of time to be speaking french with me.
later we found out the house we're staying in has 40,000 dollars worth of furniture and we are not to break anything and we are to clean up the kitchen and blah blah blah and there's this whole laundry list of things we cannot do. what the fuck ever. we did, however, take advantage of the kitchen and made a nice dinner last night. more later.