Brussels: The Trashy Version of Paris

Hello everybody. As you can tell, my blog entries are going to be a little more spread out now. There is not too much to talk about during the week, so I will probably only write a blog after each weekend. However starting this Thursday we will all be in London (And then Ireland and Scotland) until October 14th, so you can expect a really long blog after that.

This past weekend I went to Brussels in Belgium. It was a lot of fun and it went a lot more smooth than last weeks trip to Austria. We left Friday morning and came back yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. Originally going were me, Blake, Lauren, Jessica, Mer, Packman, Sam, Chris, and Jon. Then at the last minute Lily, Caroline and Michelle decided to come too. The original nine of us were supposed to get a 7am bus to the train station and get the Brussels at 11. Blake and I didn't want to wake up that early, so we decided to get a later train and get to Brussels an hour later. We ended up running into everyone on the train because they had missed their first one.

We all went to find our hostel/hotel. My friend Alicia had gone to Brussels the week before us and her one piece of advice was not to stay in the "Middle Eastern Ghetto." Well, we ended up staying in the same place that she stayed in. It was a really cheap hotel but it was in a so so neighborhood. I didn't have any problems but it was a little sketchy walking back at 2am. We dropped our bags down and started to wander around the city a little bit.





I'm not really sure what any of those buildings are but they were nice.


The Falun Gong was doing a protest.



This was some ancient city that they found and made a museum through it. We didn't go in, but we took pictures through a window on the street.






We walked around and went into about 10 or so different chocolate shops because they all gave away free samples. After about a half hour, we stumbled upon this gorgeous square that we found out was the Grand Place of Brussels. It was enormous and I tried to take some pictures of it...













I gave up with trying to capture it in pictures so I decided to take a short 360 degree video...


If you go on youtube you can see a lot longer videos of it that other people took, but I think that this shows a good basic view of it. It was amazing and we spent awhile just looking around in here. After that we were all getting a little hungry so of course the natural choice would be to find a place with waffels.


A real Belgian Waffel


I hate gypsies. They are everywhere in Brussels and take advantage of their children to try and get pitty. Every single church we would go into there were gypsies sitting in the doorway with a baby and were asking for money. Half the times I don't think the babies were even real.



This was a really cool construction site. They had gutted this entire block of buildings, but used these support beams to maintain the facade of each building.


After walking around some more we came across this theatre. Blake and I went in and asked about their schedule and much it was. We found out there was a show that night and they had student tickets for only 10 euro. Blake, Mer, Lauren, Jessica, and I decided to go and see what it was like.


Lauren, Mer, Jess and Blake in our nose bleed seats.


Inside the theatre

The play was in French and we each could understand maybe 10 words total the entire time but it was a lot of fun. It was a farce like comedy about a plastic surgean. The actors were all really great and some of the physical comedy was excellent. I feel like it helped me concentrate more on the action of the play because of the fact that I could not understand what was going on.



Some illegal pictures that Blake took during the show.

After the show was over, the rest of the guy met up with us and we walked around some more. We went back over to Grand Place and found out at night they have a lazer show.







Lily, Caroline and Michelle had come later than all of us and we were trying to call them all day to meet up, but we had the wrong number. After a while, we gave up but on our way back to our hotel room, for some reason we all stopped on this corner. We were standing there for about 2 minutes and then Sam says something like, "Hey guys why did we stop?" No one really knew why and we started to walk again when we turned around and saw Lily. The three of them were sitting in a restaurant on this corner and she saw us all and ran out to get us. Blake and I stayed with them and got some food while everyone else went back to the hotel.


Caroline, Lily, Michelle, Blake and Me at the restaurant.

They hadn't seen the lazers yet so after we ate, we took them over there. And of course...

...We had to do shakey face in front of the lazers




More pictures of the lazers

The next morning we woke up at around 9:30 so we could get free breakfast before 10:30. We decided to shove our faces filled with food so that we didn't have to buy food. At 10:30 this bitchy woman who worked there started coming around and taking our plates away. We also had some crackers that we were gonna take with us incase we wanted a snack. She picked those up and Lily said something to the extent of "Oh sorry we weren't done with those..." and the woman told us we weren't allowed to have food in our room. We then told her we were eating them now (That was a lie). So she gave us the crackers back and we all ate them while she watched us very intently.

The girls couldn't get two nights at our hotel, so they had to change to a new hotel. Blake and I went over with them and went to their new hotel which was a lot nicer. Because it was raining out, we just sort of hung around their room for a little bit before we headed out again. We found out we were able to go outside on this ledge and the rooftop and we decided to take some pictures out there...


Lily climbing up the unsteady ladder.



Michelle and I were not too keen on heights.



Blake and Lily imitating Titanic.

Blake then had the idea to take their chair on the roof to take pictures...






And a fun video of them with the chair...













This last one:
Michelle looks like Punky Brewster.
I look like someone who got their picture taken at Sear's Portrait Studio
Caroline...looks normal
And Lily and Blake look possessed.




After taking way too many pictures, we finally decided to brace the weather and head out, umbrellas in hand.




I think these pictures perfectly capture just how small the smart car is.

While one the way over to the Royal Palace, Michelle shared her imitation of Miss Pasadena's reaction to winning her crown...





She starts to hysterically cry, but she has to keep smiling.

Another character Michelle likes to play is a British BBC newscaster...


We got to the palace and there was all this scaffolding around it. We thought it would be closed, but we found a way inside.


Blake in front of graffiti outside the palace.









It was really pretty inside but we could only go into this one room.


All of us outside the palace being Asian tourists.

After the palace, we were all sort of hungry (We didn't eat as much as we should have at breakfast I guess...). We stopped at this cute little cafe where I had a croque Madame (It was a pita with cheese, pork, pineapple and salade in it). It was absolutely delicious.


Caroline, Blake, Michelle and Lily in the cafe.

After eating we just kept wandering around and found this really neat antique flea market. Blake randomly found this broken mirror that was in the garbage that he picked up and is now hanging in our room at the castle.

Across the street from the flea market was this beautiful garden.






Next to the park was yet another palace...


Yes, that is the Hilton Hotel behind the palace.

As we walked down the street we saw this bed in the window of a store...


And then...

Found this car that matched it across the street.






Michelle and Caroline with a waffle

Everywhere you go in Brussels, you keep seeing images of this famous fountain of a little boy peeing. In the gift shops they would sell little figurines of it and they made corkscrews with the corkscrew coming out of his penis. It was really weird, but we felt that we were obliged to see this fountain. We knew it was near the Grand Place, so we headed in that direction and kept asking people where it was. Of course we were using broken French to try and find it and we did not know the name of the fountain. So we asked someone something like, "Ou est le petit garcon pee?" "Where is the little boy pee?" After two people being really confused someone finally went "OH Manekin Pis and pointed us in the right direction. By the time we finally found it, it was such a let down. We all pictured it as this semi-big sculpture in a big square somewhere. In fact, it was in an ally way and was about a foot and a half high...




After Manekin Pis, the girls went back to their room to take a nap while Blake and I met up with the rest of the group for dinner. Before we met up with them we passed by this really strange thing on the street.

There was a guy tied to a fence (But he didn't seem to mind) and people were crowded around him throwing yogurt at him...


There was this alley way (More like a really narrow street that cars were not allowed on) where they had all these seafood restaurants. After some arguing about where to go, we found a really cute place that had a fixed price menu for 12.50 euros. I was able to get a beer, salad, salmon and flan all for 15 euros total. It was really delicious and the waiter was very very friendly.

A few people who had gone to Brussels the weekend before us had told us all about this bar called Delirium. It holds the Guiness World Record for the most varieties of beer. They have over 2000 different kinds of beer. So after dinner we ventured over there. When we got there, there must have been two or three hundred people in this one very very small space. In order to get anywhere you had to rub up against people on three sides of you. It was literally wall to wall people. Part of me could not stop thinking about what would happen if there was a fire. I looked around, and there were absolutely no ways out of there except for the one staircase going upstairs. Once I was able to stop thinking about that, we had a lot of fun.




Me and Lauren


Me and Mer

At around 1am everyone was leaving Delirium but Lily wanted a waffle with pistachio ice cream. Everyone was a little tipsy (Except me because the peach beer I had was only 2.6% alcohol) and we didn't want three drunk girls to be walking alone, so Blake and I went with them.


All of us in the waffle place at 1am. I didn't get anything because I had spent too much money already, but we had some laughs.

The next morning we basically woke up, ate breakfast and got on the train. We all got on at different train stations, but somehow ended up on the same train. Because of this, I was sitting in a different car with Lily, Michelle and Caroline. We stopped at a city which I can't remember the name and I thought that was where we were switching trains but the girls told me we had one more stop left. As the train is pulling away, we saw everyone else in our group getting off the train. It turned out that we got back a half hour before everyone else did, but the good thing is that everyone got home safe and sound.

Just some random pictures that didn't fit in anywhere else...

Gas station. If anyone wants to take the time to convert euros to dollars and liters to gallons, then you can see how different the price of gas is over here as compared to back home.


Joe Crocker is coming to Brussels I guess...Thought he would have died from drugs by now...


Fun graffiti on the train.

Finally...This is Blake and Michelle at 2am eating in a fast food joint in Brussels...


It is now Tuesday (I started writing this yesterday so if I said yesterday and meant Sunday don't be confused). We have class tomorrow (Wednesday) and then at 6am on Thursday we are leaving for London. After London we are going to Dublin (PADDY'S PALACE!!), Edinburgh and Glasgow. Like I said before, I will not have time (Or a computer probably) to update this for about 2 weeks. If you want, send me an email and I will make sure that I email you when I update my blog. If you want, I can start a mailing list and email you guys every time I update so you don't have to randomly check. Just a thought.

I know I am going to be dead when we come back from this excursion, but oh well, I live in a castle.