This past weekend I visited the country of chocolate, waffles, and lace; also known as Belgium! My friends and I left Dublin super early Thursday morning and flew on RyanAir into Brussels arriving around 11am. After riding into the city we spent the day in Brussels and walked around the Grand Place square which is a bunch of old, castle like buildings with gorgeous architecture. We then visited the Menneken Pis (peeing boy) statue which is quite odd, but the people of Belgium are very proud of this little fountain statue and have all kinds of things shaped after it, especially chocolate of course. And people dress it up on a daily basis in different costumes for fun. Before leaving the square we each enjoyed a delicious Belgium waffle from one of the many waffle stands, a must have in Belgium!! Next stop was Mini-Europe, which is a park that holds specific famous buildings from every country in Europe scaled down to 1/25th of their actual size. It was amazing how exact and detailed these buildings are, and now I can say I visited all of Europe in an hour! We left there and walked across the street to the Atomium which is a structure of an iron crystal enlarged to 165 billion times and was built in the 50's for the worlds fair. It's made up of 9 spheres and is about 33 stories tall; each sphere is connected by either stairs or escalators. We went to the top and looked out over Brussels city, and then made our way down through the different exhibits in each sphere. After our day in Brussels we took a train up to Bruges where we were staying for the weekend.
We got to Bruges around 7pm on Thursday and moved into our cute little B&B right on the canal. On Friday we woke up early and went to the Chocolate Museum and learned all about how chocolate is made and the different products of Belgium. To our delight we got to sample a little sweet at the end of the tour. We then walked down the street to the Fry Museum to learn about the history of the potato, who knew there was so much information on fries! At the end of the tour you can purchase the famous Belgian fries and even though I don't like fries, my friends told me we were at the fry museum in Belgium so I must get some. Personally I didn't find them that good, sorry to disappoint or offend, you could probably get a better review from a fry lover. We spent the rest of the day walking around the little, but beautiful city and visiting the different parks and hundreds of chocolate stores (there are literally at least 6 chocolate stores on every street). On Saturday, we were blessed with the best weather so far this semester; blue skies, sunshine, and 65 degrees!!! After breakfast we took a boat tour through the canals and learned about the city of Bruges, the city is just beautiful! My friend Sarah and I then rented bikes and enjoyed the gorgeous hour and a half ride along the canal up to the North Sea. We ate our sandwiches in a little park looking out over the water, and then got back on our bikes in search of the beach. About 15mins later we found a huge, white sand beach, parked out bikes and headed down in the sand. On our walk down to the water we kept saying to each other how we couldn't believe that we were on the beach, in Belgium, and it was 65 degrees; just amazing!! We spent an hour enjoying the beach, and taking pictures before heading back to our bikes. After a great afternoon, we arrived back in the city around 6:30pm, grabbed dinner, walked around, and pretty much called it a day since we had a very early morning ahead of us. Sunday was a LONG day of traveling, we got up at 4:45am and after a taxi, train, bus, and plane we departed ways in Dublin at noon and I headed back here to Belfast. It was another wonderful weekend adventure, and I definitely recommend going to Bruges if you ever have the opportunity, it's a great little city with very friendly people and the best chocolates!!!
Yummy waffles!
Atomium
London in Mini-Europe
Bruges City
En route to the beach
On the beach in Belgium!
CHEERS!!
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