Brussels, Belgium

*November 20 - 22, 2009*

This trip could not have come at any better time... I haven't been out of Spain since going to London with the girls (back in September), and it was such a nice change of scenery. I love living in Spain and all, but I was definitely in need of some fresh air. I also traveled with people I haven't traveled with before: Lily, Eric, Noe, Erica and Julie (who I did go to Granada and Sevilla with).

Sooo we left after grammar class on Friday morning for the airport. At the airport, we ended up seeing Adele and John who are also in the UVa language program and are from Wisconsin. Turns out, they were going to Brussels for the weekend too, happened to be on both of our flights, and staying at our hotel!

*Oh and side note - we split up and took taxis to the airport, and Lily and the cab driver talked the entire time... and I understood pretty much everything :) kinda cool*

Anyway, so it worked out that there were now 8 of us, so we took a bus/van into the city, that also dropped us off right at our hotel.

That night is almost indescribable. We wandered into the heart of the city, where we could hear what sounded like hardcore metal music blasting in the streets... it was quite an intimidating sound. As we approached the scene, we saw these semi-trucks all in a line moving slowly down the street, and hundreds and hundreds of people out in the streets. When we got closer, we realized everyone seemed about our age, dressed in theme, and were completely wasted. Everyone had beer steins tied to their clothes, and it was just one big sh*t show in the streets. That's when we noticed that the semi-trucks all had a ton of kegs on them, and were also blasting the music.

Adele spoke some French, and asked a near-by police officer what was going on, and from what we understood, students at the university were celebrating the last weekend of fun before the crackdown for exams began (or something like that).

We ended up just wandering around the madness for awhile, getting kebabs for dinner, and watching the insanity.

Welcome to Brussels!

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The next day, we took one of those double-decker sight-seeing buses around town. Since we only had one full day in Brussels, we thought this would be the best way to see the city.

Brussels ended up being a much bigger city than we thought... the drive around town was beautiful though. So much greenery (not like Spain), and had very modern architecture (also, not like Spain), with the occasional monument and park here and there.

(we stopped somewhere for crepes and coffee)

(the Cathedral)

My favorite part of the day was going to see the Atomium:

We bought tickets to go up inside, where you had a view of the whole city!

The exhibit inside was also fun to explore :)

(the idea behind the Atomium - a cube on its side)

We spent a lot of time taking pictures afterwards while waiting for the bus.

For dinner that night, we found a nice (but not too expensive) restaurant, and everyone had a huge bowl of mussels for dinner. For dessert, we had melt-in-your-mouth waffles... they were sooo amazing.

That night, we ended up going this bar, Delirium. It is well known because they have more than 2000 different types of beer! They must have had over 30 beers on tap, and the bar itself was 3 stories, and was decorated with vintage advertisements for the beers they carried. The wall behind the bar was also covered in dollar bills from countries of around the world, with the name of the city written on it. None of us had ever seen anything like Delirium.

The weekend in Brussels was definitely amazing :)