Hello again! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm really bad at keeping up with social media (a blog counts as social media, right?) Anyways, I spent this past weekend in Belgium with a group for international youths living in Paris. Most of the people that went on the trip were also American so there was a lot of English speaking, but I stuck with my friends from the IES program and we blabbered on in our broken French the whole time. It was pretty fun.
Saturday, we met up with the group called CIJP, at 6am on the front steps of the Opéra. We departed around 7 am for Bruges. I think we arrived in Bruges around 11 am and we started our visit with a guided tour of the city. Because I'm me, I opted for the French tour instead of the English tour, and I'm proud to say that I understood almost everything the guide said. Did you know that much of the architecture in Bruges was actually built during the 19th century in a neo-gothique style and is not actually from the Middle Ages? Pretty interesting stuff.
After the tour we had about two hours left to explore around Bruges on our own. My friends and I were starving but by the time we found a cheap enough restaurant, there wasn't really that much time left to explore and we had already walked around pretty much the entire city already. Bruges is REALLY small and you can see basically all of it in one or two days. I really liked it, though, and thought it was absolutely beautiful.
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| City Hall, where people get married! |
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| Bell Tower |
At about 4 pm Saturday evening, we all met up with CIJP and hopped on the bus to Bruxelles. I had looked at the itinerary beforehand so I knew we would be arriving in Bruxelles after dark and brought my tripod for this reason. However, because I'm incredibly smart and talented, after arriving in Bruxelles and walking down to the Grande Place to see the city center lit up at night, I discovered that I forgot to bring the ball head (the part of the tripod onto which you mount the camera) thus rendering my tripod useless (sorry to those of you who don't really get cameras; this is really just
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| Sorry, I couldn't help myself, but I have kept the stupid faces to a minimum. |
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| I'm not sure what this is but it was pretty so I took a picture |
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| Traditional Belgian dinner: Waterzoi (or however you spell that) |
We had all day Sunday to explore around Bruxelles by ourselves. I was really surprised to find that the city was so modern. It was not at all like the rest of the cities in Europe that I've been to and it definitely wasn't what I was expecting. That's not to say that I didn't like it or enjoy my time there, it was just much different that I thought. In fact, Bruxelles kind of reminded me of being Chicago with all of the big skyscrapers and business buildings with tons of windows.
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| These pics don't prove the modern-ness of Bruxelles, but I swear it is very modern! |
Moving on, Sunday was a day full of walking around. My friends had done some research before leaving Paris and had some ideas of what they wanted to see while in Belgium. I was just along for the ride. Sunday morning, we found a couple of the comic walls that have well known Belgian comic book characters/scenes painted on them. Then, in an attempt to find the Atomium, an apparently very famous structure resembling a gigantic atom, we stumbled upon this beautiful, old basilica that I forced everyone to take pictures in front of.
Once we got to the basilica, we saw a sign pointing in the direction of the Atomium and one of the structure's silver balls shining up from over the trees, so, naturally, we decided to head in that direction. After about an hour of walking towards the Atomium and not actually arriving at the thing, we decided to ask someone for directions only to find out that the structure was even further away than we originally thought and required a tram ride to get there. My friends were intent on seeing this darn atom, so we hopped on a tram and finally arrived at the Atomium. I'm not really sure if it was worth the trouble, but I am glad to say that I saw it.
After that, we took the metro back into the city center and toodled around the Grande Place, where my friends bought loads of Belgian chocolate and speculoos cookies. We were all exhausted, sore and hungry by the time we got back into the city and finished our shopping, so we sat down at some bistro tables on the square. This was definitely the highlight of the trip becaaaauuuusse......WAFFLES!! Oh my gosh I can't even explain how delicious Belgian waffles are and I didn't even buy one from a real restaurant, just a little stand. Delicious! I got one with bananas, chantilly cream, and chocolate sauce. It was so good I died, and then I felt really disgusting afterwards because for lunch I ate Belgian fries with curry sauce, which were also really tasty but definitely made me feel guilty. Good thing I walked a lot?
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| To die for! |
Waffle break ended and it was time to head back to the bus. We didn't arrive in Paris until 10:45 pm and I didn't get back to my home stay until around 11:15. I was pretty exhausted the next day at school, but it was worth it to be able to experience another country.
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| L'Opéra |
That's it for now. More to come on other adventures soon!! À toute à l'heure! :)
