Brussels Weekend

Here I am posting a casual blog about how I just spent this past weekend in Brussels, Belgium. Who would've ever thought they'd see the day!!
Night 1
Okay, so Anna and I set off on Thursday night to the airport and boarded our (late, of course, shoutout to RyanAir) flight to Brussels. We had to walk out on the tarmac to get to the plane which made me feel famous. We arrive in Brussels and have to navigate our way to our hotel, which was right by the airport because we knew we would be getting in late at night (midnight-ish). However, we arrived to everyone speaking French. Obviously I think I've got this trip in the bag because I took French in high school (ha ha very funny of me). I don't recall too much of my high school French, but I got us to the hotel so that was a good sign.
Day 1

City Hall

We wake up in the morning and make our way back to the airport, on foot because we were much closer to our hotel than we thought-only about 15 or so mins of a walk. Oh and walking is free. From the airport, we boarded a bus and got to Brussels. Because it turns out that we had flown into Charleroi which is not in fact Brussels. Love that. Where we arrived was kind of a sketchy part of town, so we started to walk towards our hostel so that we could drop our bags off before going to explore. A half hour later, we got to the hostel (which was in a better part of town, don't worry mom<3). It overlooked a pretty canal, so I think Anna and I both felt better about it. I know I did. It was too early to check in, but they had lockers that you could store your bags in so we did that. Then, we left the hostel and were both STARVING because we hadn't eaten all day and at this point it was around 1 pm. We found literally the first place we saw and had gyros and fries for lunch. We were in a bit of a rush because we'd booked a bike tour of the city. It left from Grand Place, so we inhaled our food and set off towards there. It was so beautiful!! I couldn't believe how tall the buildings were, and there were about a million people in the square. We met our bike tour guide, James, who was Australian and very nice. We also had a Malaysian family and a group of 6 women, who were there for a 40th birthday weekend, and they were from Gibraltar. It was a very diverse group which was really cool.

Anna riding through the park

James walked us around and told us lots about the city square, including my favorite fact which was that everyone in the city has to get married at City Hall, and each couple is announced to the whole square by a man who had a similar vibe to a town crier. We witnessed 2 weddings in the time of us being there (about a half hour). We then arrived at the storage facility where the bikes were kept. There were hundreds of bikes inside, which belong to people all over the city. We got to our section and each chose bikes. Then we went back outside, and prepped to take off on our tour. James took a head count and realized that we were missing one person. It was the mom of the Malaysian family. He went back inside and realized that she was stuck inside of the bike locker (which he was calling "the cave"). He got her out, but we found it amusing that this woman's husband and daughter didn't even realize that she was gone?? It was kind of funny but a tad bit concerning. Anyways. We set off. We made it probably about 200 yards up the street and all stopped at a red light. Where did the Malaysian mom go though?? She was lost AGAIN. So James is like oh no and has to go ride back to where we started to find her. I guess she didn't know how to ride a bike?? You really can't make this up. Her husband and daughter went back with James to deal with the situation (if you want to call it that), and Anna and I stayed at the stop light with the birthday party. They were hilarious, all had shirts made up that said "birthday squad" on the front (except the bday girl, hers said "birthday queen") and had their names on the back. We were taking pictures and boomerangs of them, and then they noticed a CBD shop on the street corner and found this to be a great opportunity to go inside. James returned, with the dad and daughter who literally were leaving the mom behind while they still went on the bike tour. I don't even know what to say about that. Anyways. We actually started this time (once the gals got out of the CBD shop of course), and were about 45 mins behind schedule at this point. God bless you James, he had quite a bit of patience and was hilarious. The bike tour was an incredible way to get to see so many parts of the city, and we were really happy that we did it the first day so that we had an idea of where everything was for the next few days.

Fries and beer. Yay!

Then, we got to take a break about 2/3 of the way through the tour to get fries and beer! Incredible. What a guy. Once the tour was finished, he told us that we had biked around 8 miles, which was shocking because it didn't feel like that at all! It was definitely a highlight of our trip. By the time we made it back, we were about 1.5 hours later than expected, so it was 7pm.
We went back to our hostel, and made it to our room. We were sharing it with 4 other people. Anna and I shared a bunk bed and I realized I don't think that I have slept on the top bunk of a bunk bed since I was probably 12?? We decided to have more of a chill night and just go out to dinner then back home to bed (since we had not only biked around 8 miles, we had also walked around 8 miles that day too). We went to this pasta place called Bavet, which was soooo good. Walking home, we saw a beautiful sunset over the canal by our hostel.

Sunset over the canal

Day 2

Thank god for Belgian Waffles.

I woke up and Anna was already awake because she was kept up by one of the men in our room snoring for the better part of the night. I slept right through it of course. We wanted to take a chocolate tour but also didn't want to pay a million dollars to do so, so we followed along with another travel blog's self guided chocolate tasting tour. It wound up being both of our favorite part of the trip, and took most of the day. I am going to write another post about it so that you can all be super jealous :) It took us to taste waffles, which were SO GOOD. Like I would go back to Belgium literally just for the waffles and the chocolate. We made our way to the Jardin du Mont Des Arts and had ourselves a little photoshoot (because it wouldn't be a vacation with me otherwise).

Our classy dinner

Our lil photoshoot 

We made our way back to the hostel and got ready for a night out. We decided to take ourselves out to a fancy dinner, because Anna wanted mussels (apparently they're really good in Brussels), and I am always ready to treat myself so I was down. I got a nice "Belgian steak" which was so good. We were chatting with the people at the table next to us, who were a group of 3 couples from Denmark. They have been taking a weekend trip once a year to a different country all together for over 30 years. One of the couples even offered for Anna and I to stay at their house for a weekend if we ever wanted to go to Denmark, which was very sweet. Obviously we got their contact info because we love a free place to stay. We then went to a bar, called Delirium, which has over 2,000 beers on tap, and was insane. We met some cool people and had ourselves a night..!


Day 3

Car free day

After our big night out on the town, Anna and I needed a nice chill day. Luckily (or unluckily I haven't yet decided how I am going to view this), a lot of places are closed on Sundays in Europe. So Sundays become a very chill day for people, which can be very nice. We basically made a beeline to Mary's (my favorite chocolate place from the tour), because I needed to have some more of that chocolate. This Sunday was "car free" day in Brussels, which was so cool. The only vehicles allowed on the road were trams, busses, and taxis. The rest were bikes, scooters, rollerblades, electric scooters, etc. It was definitely one of the coolest things I have ever seen. We met a couple who live in Brussels, but were "playing tourist" for the day because it was such a cool day in the city. It seemed like everyone was doing that. We people watched for a lot of the day, because it was really cool to see that everyone was traveling by bike. It would be cool if we could do something like that in the US for a day every year or something, but I am not sure that Americans would be so keen to comply with something like that which is a bit sad. We stumbled across a huge festival in the park that was for the car free day. It was awesome. There were activities for the whole family, including kids games, a craft fair, an entire beer section, all sorts of food, a petting zoo, etc. We spent a lot of time at the festival relaxing and people watching. Then, we left and took lime scooters (check em out: https://www.li.me/electric-scooter) to get closer to the bus stop. They were really fun, and I am hoping that they will come either to UNH or the Cape, because I had never seen them before!! We stopped and had a quick dinner of chicken crepes and moroccan chicken pasties. Lots of trying new things! I had to translate some of Anna's questions to our waiter because he spoke very minimal English. So if you're wondering, yes I became fluent in French over the weekend. Somehow we found our bus (thank you god) and made it back to the airport. Again, our flight was delayed (no shock there), but we did in fact make it back to Edinburgh, and home to our flat.

Anna and I at the garden

All in all, it was a fabulous weekend in Brussels! We had lots of new experiences and had a lot of fun traveling together. We navigated our way around a primarily French speaking area and made it back to Edinburgh in one piece. Best of all, I got my visa all sorted out (see visa struggles post), so now I can officially be in school! Things are looking up for your girl. As always, #stayclassyscotland #andbrussels