Yesterday we had some guest coming over and thanks to the lovely weather, we were able to sit outside and enjoy a delicious dinner.
The day started as any other day, late and relaxing. I continued watching my new series “Wednesday” before I went up for some light breakfast. Not much was on the agenda besides just preparing for the guests that were arriving at 6pm. I helped my mother out in the garden trimming some of the overgrown grass. After that it was just waiting until the guests arrived
They arrived right on time at 6pm, and one of them brought their lovely little dog. I have met them all before since they are my mother’s girlfriends since I was little. We sat outside in beautiful sunlight and started talking about all kinds of things. They updated me on their life and I updated them on mine. I told them about the boy’s concerts and how the weather had been in Belgium over the summer. We sat outside together with some nice drinks until dinner was ready.
Today we were having prawns and bread together with a side salad and some avocado. It’s quite simple, but also very popular in Norway especially during summer time. We decided to eat outside since the weather was so nice. So we ate and talked more about life.
After dinner I headed down stairs, because the guest was here primarily because it was their monthly book club meeting. So when they started talking about the book that they had read, I decided to excuse myself and head down for the night.
I spent the rest of my night talking and playing some games with my boyfriend, before heading to bed. Even though the guests were mostly friends of my mums, it was really nice to catch up and hang out with them during the evening and the food was really delicious.
The Norway trip is still going good. I have been quite busy ever since the bachelorette party this weekend. It’s been a lot of helping my mother cleaning out the garage and going on walks. Yesterday we took a nice one and had a delicious dinner.
We started the day a bit later than usual, since I was still recovering from my headache. Our first order of business was to clean more out of the garage and bringing it to a place we call “the dump”. Thanks to our combined efforts, we have been able to clean out half of the garage in just a couple of days. This has been really nice, but also a bit tiering. After our trip to “the dump”, we headed to a small shopping centre to just do some grocery shopping for todays get together. We got 3kg of shrimps, some salmon and chicken. When we were done with the small shopping round, we headed home and had a small, very late lunch.
At around 6pm, we were ready for our daily walk. We decided to walk down along the river that goes through the city. It’s a walk that I used to do a lot with my dad, both before and after he got sick. It’s a really nice and easy walk and it was fun to see all the changes that has happened along the river bend since I walked it last. It sadly began to rain not long after we started our walk. It wasn’t that bad compared to how much we get in Belgium. We walked all the way down to food court, which I have been at plenty of times. We decided to eat at a place called “Døgnvil” since the court was about to close when we arrived.
“Døgnvil” is quite famous for their burgers, so I decided to go with a classic Cheddar and bacon, with some simple fries on the side. My mother was drawn toward one with a salmon in it, and she got a really nice piece too. It tasted really delicious and it felt really nice after the walk. When we were done eating we headed back up the path.
I was hoping we would catch the tram, since I was feeling a bit tired and it was already close to 10 pm, but my mother just kept walking until we were basically at the crossroad bellow our house. Then she decided to the tram and I decided to walk the last bit, since I didn’t want to spend € 3 for 1 tram stop, when it only takes me 10 min to walk up. When I got home I just headed straight downstairs and relaxed for the rest of the night since I was a tad annoyed that we ended up walking all the way home.
Friday I travelled back home to Norway for 2 weeks, so that I can attend both my cousin’s bachelorette party and her wedding. I arrived quite late and just got a short sleep before it was up and get ready for an exciting weekend.
Friday was mostly spent on traveling, so not much to tell about that day. The only thing was that I arrived at the airport 1h earlier than I was planning to, but better too early rather than too late. Everything else went smoothly all the way home.
The big day was yesterday. I had to wake up at 7 am to shower and get ready for my mum to drive me and my sister to my cousin’s place. There we met up with all the other guest, and received a goodie bag with various items. We all got a nice T-shirt, a bracelet, a pink cowboy hat and some snacks and drinks.
After everyone had arrived it was off to Tønsberg and the house we had rented for the weekend. It took us about 1h to arrive to the house, and we had to leave as soon as we had unloaded the car. Our next stop was the trotting track where we had arranged it so that my cousin got try out trotting racing for herself (with supervision). We were a bit late, so the horse had been waiting for almost 30 min, but it went well and the bride to be enjoyed herself a lot. We stood on the side line with drinks and cheered. When they had ran a couple of rounds it was off and ready to head into the city for some lunch.
We ended up sitting in the park and had small games and quiz (which I did terrible on) before we ordered some pizza for lunch. We all shared stories and just got to know each other before heading on to the next activity.
Our next stop was Escape room. We got put into two teams of 6 and were given to different rooms. Our was about us being kidnapped on our way home from a night out. We were actually so bad that we needed several hints and even with those we barely made it out in time. We had like 1.5 minute left on the clock, but it was a lot of fun to try and fail solving all the puzzles. The other team did much better than us, but they apparently also had two members who were very excited and active.
For the rest of evening we just had dinner by the docks at a place called “Haveriet”, where I ordered a chicken tagliatelle with Smirnoff of Ice raspberry. My cousin even got a free beer from a guy at another table. We headed out to our last place for the evening afterwards. Where we played some shuffle board and got some more drinks.
My sister and I headed back to the house at 10pm already, because she had a headache and even though a part of me wanted to stay with the girls, I also wanted to make sure that my sister got home safely. We both went to bed when we got to the house. I did hear that the other girls were up until around 3 am just party and drinking.
Today we just woke up, had a small breakfast and then just prepared to leave. We discussed in the car about how the evening went, and we all agreed that even though it was a really fun day + night, the fact that one of the guest had her baby, dog and husband with her, which meant that she constantly needed to keep tabs on that. The fact that her behaviour made people a bit annoyed also kind of ruined the night. She and some of the guests just up and left earlier, without saying goodbye or cleaning up the room they had slept in. So we all came to the conclusion that she probably shouldn’t have joined or only joined for part of it and then gone home.
The bride to be did have a lot of fun, despite that little piece of drama.
After we got back to my cousins place, we just said goodbye to the remaining guest and my mum came and picked me up. The rest of the day we just went for a walk, changed some light bulbs, visited my dads grave and had a nice dinner. We were suppose to buy new ones, but forgot that things are closed on Sundays.
So that was the end of this weekend. Tomorrow we are planning on doing some tidying in the garage and then probably go for another walk. So far, I’m enjoying the trip.
This Sunday my boyfriend and I went to Technopolis in Mechelen for the first time (at leas for me). What was going to be a nice relaxing outing ended up feeling like a full on work out session!
We woke up at around noon since we knew it would take us at leas 1.5h of travel time and they closed at 5pm. We rode our electric bikes into the city which we usually do. My bike only had 33% left so I was trying my best to save as much as I could and it thankfully lasted the entire way in. Then we took the train to Mechelen. The last part was a 30 min walk, which was kind of nice since it was REALLY quite there. It almost felt like walking in a ghost city.
We arrived at Technopolis at around 2 pm which was perfectly according to plan. After putting our things away, we started exploring the place. They had a lot of fun things to try out which I really enjoyed. Even though it was all tailored towards kids, I had such a fun blast just checking everything out. There was everything from learning how sound waves and electrical current work to more physical activates such as running and climbing.
One of the activates was to test your speed against various animals. You select your anime such as; human, turtle, cheeta etc. I picked a snake and got ready for my sprint. I ran so fast that I wasn’t able to stop at the finish line and almost ran into the wall. Since I had to break so much, my toes were hurting for the rest of that day.
My favorite thing was one where you would have to lead a ring through a pipe thing without hitting the walls. I was doing so well until I flopped and got like 3 hits in. I ended with 5 in total. Nathan managed to do it with only 2 hits. My other favorite was one where you stood in front of a green background and then had a very strong shin on you for a second and could see your shadow being cast upon the wall as an after image.
Here are some photos of the things we did:
We were there for about 2h before we decided that we had seen it all. It was a warm walk back since the sun was still quite high on the sky. When we arrived back to Antwerpen we went to eat some delicious ramen and I ended up with a nice Tonkotsu ramen with pork and karage (fried chicken bites). Then it was the biking back.
I told you that I had enough battery for getting into the city, BUT I didn’t have enough for the back home. So I had to ride most of the distance in 2nd gear on an electric bike, which if you don’t know is a lot heavier to do compared to a normal bike, because of the battery inside.
When I got home I felt like I had done a whole workout session with the biking, walking, sprinting + other physical stuff that I did at Techno. My entire body felt so exhausted, so It was really nice just relaxing for the rest of the evening. Despite ended up feeling really tired, I still had an amazing and fun day. It was really nice to go out and do something and all the activates were really fun.
Yesterday, my boyfriend and I headed out into town for the first time in a long time, but we ended up changing plans last minute.
Our evening plan was to try out a smash burger place because I have never had a proper smash burger before. After that, we would head to a place called “Gamestate,” which is like an arcade with a lot of machines that give you different amounts of tickets.
Since it was raining on and off all day yesterday, we decided to head out at 6 PM. We took our bikes and rode into town. We parked outside of the arcade and were about to walk toward the restaurant when we spotted a new place called “Gyojasang Korean Kitchen & Bar,” which we quickly figured out was owned by the same people from the Korean Clubhouse we visited last year. We started talking about going there instead and ended up swapping since it also looked interesting.
I ordered something called “Beef Steak Soulout,” and Nathan ordered some fried chicken. For drinks I had a Lychee Soda and he went with Yuzu Lemonade. The food and drinks were really delicious. I loved both the veggies and the meat in my dish, and I even got to have some of Nathan’s chicken since he wasn’t able to finish everything.
After dinner, we headed to the arcade. We filled our card with 60 credits and went around the different machines to see what we wanted to do. One of them was about pulling back a pin and releasing it to move a ball forward, and depending on where it landed, you got a certain amount of tickets. I did it, and I managed to get the big bonus, which was 300 tickets. Then I tried DDR for the first time and managed to injure myself by overstepping and stepping off the platform. I now have a small scratch on my foot. We also managed to get another 100 tickets for stacking 50 blocks on top of each other. We ended the night with a total of around 850 tickets. It was very satisfying to insert them into the machine. Then we headed home since it was past 9 PM already.
The rest of the evening was just spent playing some more REPO with friends. I had a really fun time. This was our second time at the arcade, but the first time we didn’t have a lot of credits to play around with. My favorite was the DDR and that I got the big 300 ticket bonus xD I definitely would love to go there again with perhaps a group of friends.
Yesterday the boys had their first concert of this year but it was NOT what I expected at all. Regardless it was a lot of fun both for the band members and for the crowd.
The only thing we knew before arriving was that it was an Portugese event. We arrived at around 8:30 pm to set everything up and the first thing we realized driving up to the event was that there were a lot of bikers. This was apparently a meetup for “A.M.A” (Amigos Motards Antwerpen). It’s my first time attending such a meetup. The boys had a bit a trouble communicating without the singer present due to most of them communicated better in Portugese, but he arrived shortly after. Since the lead singer is part Portugese and it was primarily because of him that they accepted the gig. The guy that was in charge of the audio setup and such was very sweet. He tried his best to communicate in English when needed. It was quite funny to see the boys in my shoes aka not knowing what was going on due to the language barrier.
After the setup and the small sound check we sat down for some foods. They were serving BBQ and the guitarist ordered stuff on our behalf. We got a baguette with meet in it. Quite simple, but I didn’t mind it. When they had eaten the show began. I was planning on streaming it over on my Twitch channel like I usually do, but since it was in a remote area the internet was too bad.
They started with a new song which sounded really good. They had did the rest of the setlist with some covers in the middle. I did my usual job of taking photo’s but it was a bit difficult due to the bad lighting. The crowd seemed to be having a fun time, one of them kept wanting to dance with me which made me a bit uncomfortable. Towards the end they even asked for an encore which is the bands first time. They even got one of the guys up on stage singing to one of their songs with his own lyrics. We might not have understood what he was saying, but he did perform a lovely harmonica solo. Since they started their performance quite late, it was already past 11 when they finished. So we just packed everything and headed home. Listening to a lot of AI country music in the car.
I was feeling a bit under the weather prior to the concert, but the time there was so fun that it made me feel much better. Next concert is already next Thursday, which will be held much closer to home. As always, looking forward to it.
Good day friends! I know it’s been a while. A lot of things happened between last post and now, but I won’t get into it at the moment. For now I’ll be talking about my week visiting my best friend.
I traveled out on the 19th. My bus left at 5 am and took around 8h to arrive. I don’t really mind the hours since I was sleeping for most of the trip anyways. When I arrived my friend picked me up and we went back to her place. Then we chilled about and started on her evening routine that involves: walking and feeding her 4 dogs and then making dinner. So that’s what we did the first day.
Next day aka Thursday was the day that our friend would arrive with their dog that we were going to baby sit for the weekend. Thankfully all the dogs got along good enough for it to work out. We spent the next couple of days just taking care of all the dogs until the owner came back on Sunday and picked her up. We did play some games and watched anime in the evenings.
I decided to stay longer than Sunday so that my friend and I could do something together. We planned: Haircut, Escape room, mini golf, shopping and sushi.
Monday a friend of my friend came over to cut an color my hair. Since they are friends it’s way cheaper than at the hairdressers. I picked a bit too short cut, but I think the style suits me. We also colored my head purple again, but only bleaching some parts instead of the whole head. It ended up looking really cool and felt really nice and refreshing
On Wednesday we did the Escape room and mini golf a place called “Fun park”. We started with the escape room which was based around Dracula. We only got hard stuck once, but that was due to the equipment not working as intended, which happened a couple of times xD. The lady did say that we did really well on time. After that we played some mini golf which they also had there. Some of the courses were quite hard since you need put the ball with some force. All in all we had a lot of fun and would defiantly come back again to try out the other stuff. They had bowling and lazer tag. Then there was back to do the evening stuff
Escape roomGolf
Thursday was our last day so we just drove into the city did a bit of shopping for hair products and clothes and then we found a place to eat. It had 4.8 stars on google and was called HARU. It was amazing. The food there definitely deserved the good reviews. The fish just melted in your mouth and everything was just so tasty. My bestie even claimed it to be her new favorite place. So if you’re ever in Aschaffenburg and looking for an asian cousin place, then check out HARU.
Yesterday was mostly spent on driving me to the bust stop again and just travel back. I met up with my boyfriend and we went for some ramen and then went home and I did a small stream to try out the new life simulation game called “Inzoi”
I had a really fun week, but it’s also nice to be home with my bf and my pc. Hope you all have had a nice week and I’ll talk to you next time.
First of all, I hope everyone had had a lovely holidays regardless of if you celebrate it or not ^^
This weekend Nathan and I took our bikes into the city to take a look at the Christmas market that has been going on for the past two weeks.
There were a lot of people and also a small kermis. We started at the “Grote Markt” where we got some potato on a stick and I had some hot coco. Then we moved over to “Hendrik Conscienceplein” which was a place we saw on the news. After that we got some bubble tea at our regular spot, since it’s almost been 6 months since we’ve been there. I also got some new shoes since my current ones had a hole in them. Then we went back over “Groenplaats”, were i got a hot dog. We stopped by KFC to get some food for today, since we are having a friend over.
After all that we headed home. All in all it was a nice evening. It’s always fun going out this time of year to see all the random people.
The year is almost over and all though things didn’t go quite as I had hope. I can’t really complain.
I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your year.
This Friday my boyfriend’s band some doing another concert, but this time in a different city and even though ended well we did run into a few problems which made the experience a tad more stressful xD
The concert was being performed in a city named Gent, which is about 1.5h away with car. Neither my boyfriend or I have a license so unless could catch a ride with someone we would have to take the train, which would make the entire traveling time at least 2h. Thankfully the drummer had space for us in his car due some plans being changed on his end. According to the schedule they boys were suppose to be there at 6 pm to set up everything, then sound check at 7 and the concert would start at 9 pm. Unfortunately the stuck in hard traffic on his way from work and picked us up almost 1h later than he originally planned, which already set us back quite a bit. On top of that, on our way to the other city there had been a car crash with a lot of cars involved which made the whole motorway slow for another 20 min. Because of all this, we didn’t arrive in the city until a bit after 7pm. Then we had to park across the water and with help from all 3 of us carry all the stuff for 350m. Even though we were 3 people, everything was still very heavy. but we made it in good enough time for everything to work out.
Despite everything, the concert it self went really well. They even performed 2 new songs which even I hadn’t heard. Everyone seemed to enjoy the show including themself. I was okay their photographer and tried my best to take as many photos as possible. I think they turned out okay. The concert lasted for about 1h with total of 11 songs. We stayed a bit afterwards, but not too long since we still had a long ride home. Thankfully the were no crash on our way home, so just smooth sailing.
When we got home we were quite exhausted and just eat something and then headed straight to bed. I’m looking forward to next time which will happen next Saturday.
Happy Halloween friends. I know this goes up on the day after, but that’s okay. I was busy for most of yesterday evening so didn’t have to time post this before midnight. I will tell you all what I was doing.
So the day started quite early. Nathan had taken free from work because he had to head to band practice at at around noon and then it was off to the city for their performance later that night. For those who doesn’t know this, Nathan’s band aka On Hold used to have a female singer, but she left to focus more on her solo career. They have stayed in contact as good friends and about a month ago she hits them up asking if they would be down to play with her on one of her shows that she was doing in the city. So the boys have been practicing 7 of her songs together with her and yesterday was their big performance. Perhaps their biggest one yet in terms of audience.
The even was held a the museum for fine art called KMSKA. The event started at 6pm and lasted till 9:30pm with multiple performances from different singers. KARO and On Hold (Aka my boyfriend’s band their friend) was main act of the evening and therefor was scheduled last. Despite this they had to be there from 2 pm to setup, do soundcheck etc…, so I didn’t see him or the other until later when I arrived at the event.
I had also invited two of my friends to come to the event. They both live 1h+ away from me, so it was really nice of them to take the time to join the show and keep me company. We met up at around 7:30pm and decided to head for dinner before entering the event. We went to a close by pizzeria and their pizza’s were really delicious. They had a special Pumpkin pizza with cheese, pancetta and a nice sauce. It tasted really nice and for dessert I decided to give the Tiramisu a second chance, but I still didn’t like the taste so my friend finished it off for me.
After we had eaten we headed to the venue and met up with my boyfriend. I introduced him to my friends and then we just enjoyed our evening listening to the other people performing before it was their turn.
I managed to have a small chat with the singer and asked if she was nervous to which she responded with “I feel like dying”. I told her that if anything went wrong she could just blame the boys for no support xD She entered the stage and gave an incredible performance. Before every song she had some small talking points which were nice. We got to know a bit about her backstory and the backstory to her songs, which I always appreciate. They did a really good job and everyone else at the event seem to agree as well.
After the performances it was just packing down all the equipment and then head home. I said goodbye to my friends and thanked them for coming and was happy that they seemed to enjoy the show and would like to come again, when the boys are actually playing some of their songs. Rest of the night was just chilling with some games before heading to bed. Nathan had after all been up and in full swing since 11 am.
PS! If you want to check them both out I’ll leave links to their music. Keep in mind that one of them are in Dutch, but it should be easy to navigate to their songs if you just want to take a listen.
The Anna behind Yannani 