brussels: belgium

This past weekend was a whirlwind trip to Brussels, Belgium and Amsterdam, Netherlands. Amsterdam is a very expensive city to fly into, so I decided to fly into Brussels and then take a bus to Amsterdam, a much cheaper option. And this way, I got to see two cities for the price of one! I traveled with my two friends Amy and Katherine, which was the perfect group to adventure with. Sometimes traveling in a larger group gets overwhelming, so just the three of us was perfect. 

We started the weekend by taking a 3am bus to Dublin to catch our early flight. We flew into a small airport right outside of Brussels then took a bus, then train to the city center. As we were on our way to find out hotel, we stumbled across a small, cobblestone road with lots of seafood restaurants with inexpensive lunch specials, so we decided to stop to eat. We thought we were being so good a budget conscious until we got our bill and realized our waters were 5 euros each! Oh well, you live and you learn. Then we adventured to find our hotel. We sort of cheated the system with our hotel. In Europe, instead of paying for a room, you pay per person, so hotels can get expensive. For example a room with two double beds for two people would be around 100 euros, but the same room for three people would be about 130 euros. So instead, we pretended that there were only two of us and shared a room with two big double beds and paid the lower price :) I guess it's a bit sneaky, but hey, were on a serious budget! Our hotel room was actually cheaper than many of the hostels, and definitely much nicer. 

After settling in, we decided to venture out to see the city since we really only had one full day in Brussels. Belgium is obviously known for their Belgian waffles, so we decided to go on a "waffle crawl" where we basically sampled any waffle that came our way. Amy and I got full quickly, but Katherine (the tiniest one) gave an impressive performance of waffle eating :) We went to the Grand Place, a main square with incredible, to-die-for architecture. None of us knew what to expect from the city of Brussels, or even knew much about the city going into it. So, when we rounded the corner and saw this magnificent square, we were in awe. Then we headed to Manneken Pis, an area with a famous statue of a little boy peeing. We walked into countless Belgian chocolate shops and stopped at waffle stands along the way. We also saw an incredible church named St. Michel, which had similarities to Notre Dame in Paris. After walking around the city for several hours, we decided to go back to the hotel to nap quickly and get ready to go out for the night. 

First waffle on our waffle crawl :)

 Lots of yummy candy & chocolate shops.

 Grand Place.

Me, Amy, and Katherine at Grand Place.

Little boy peeing...for some strange reason this is famous.

 St. Michel.

 Look Dad! There's another Busy Bee in the world :)

We went to a bar named Delirium, which I had heard about from friends and also read about in several travel books. The bar on any given night stocks over 2000 types of beer, with about 50 on tap of just Belgian beers. It was overwhelming to say the least. The bartender recommended a Belgian beer to us that we very good. Next we decided to try the beer named Delirium tremens, which was about 10% alcohol, so almost double a regular beer, and it tasted awful. After we took our first sips, one of us blurted out, "this tastes like sweet elephants butt!" (Excuse my language) But, we laughed all weekend that we drank a beer that we all convinced each other tasted like an elephant's back side. Also, what they call a pint in Belgium is much bigger than in Ireland. It was more like 2 drinks in Ireland. Needless to say, two beers was plenty and much stronger than we expected!

 Cafe Delirium...should of known it was bad news from the name!

Don't let the cute elephant deceive you, the drink is dangerous haha :)

Us and our "pints."

The next morning was pretty much a disaster, but I'm choosing to not let it affect how I see Brussels, because I really did love the city! We woke up all not feeling very well. We asked the hotel staff where to catch the Euroline bus to Amsterdam, and they took us that we had to purchase our tickets and depart from a station called "midi" station. This was about as far away from our hotel as possible, so we went to the south side of the city to get our tickets. Once we got there, they told us that the bus actually departs from "nord" or "north" station, which was all the way back closer to our hotel, then north some more. Basically, polar ends of the city. When we finally got to "nord" station, a woman kindly told us that we could have just purchased tickets from there all along, so we were frustrated to say the least.  However, we finally got on a bus that took us to Amsterdam!

Brussels was a city that took us all by surprise. Like I said, we didn't really have any expectations going into it, so it was nice to be pleasantly surprised. It's really a unique city with an interesting mix of extreme old and new. There were some of the prettiest old buildings, then really chic, modern ones as well. It is an incredibly diverse city, and almost hard to figure out what a "Belgian" person looks like because of the diversity. All in all it was another great city, and I'll definitely never forget the amazing waffles :)