Pasión de Viajar: I think I was supposed to be a Belgian

This past weekend I boarded a plane and headed up north to Belgium to meet Madi, my best friend from high school who is studying in Florence.

We arrived in Brussels on Friday afternoon and headed to our hostel, the place was easy enought to find as it was literally two doors off of the main square. We spent the night wandering the city center and taking guesses at what things were in this very friendly and happy city with good food.
Those questions were answered the next morning when we took a free three or so hours walking tour.We got the full history of the gilded and beautiful main square, the Grand Place, including how the Swan House which is conveniently attached to the brewery is where Karl Marx lived and wrote the Communist Manifesto. We also took a walk down to Mannekin Pis, one of the most famous if not the most famous piece from Brussels, it is about a whopping one foot tall statue of a baby on top of a fountain that he is peeing into. I do love that he was knighted after a french soldier found him but he had to be clothed to be knighted, so he was given an outfit and know he is dressed for the weather and holidays and has over 800 costumes. We also took a walk past the cathedral, through the royal parks, by the opera house, as well as many other phenomenal sites hearing anecdotes and stories along the way such as the story of how the sax was invented there.

Grand Place

Mannekin Pis

Swan House

Opera House

Playing the Sax in the Home of the Sax

We spent the afternoon attempting to find the atomium, the large statue of an atom that Brussels is famous for, key word is attempt as any information you are given about it is a lie, it is not a twenty minute walk from the city center, it's not even a twenty minute metro ride, we finally saw it from afar at the end of trip after taking a forty five minute metro ride out to it before our flight. So to make the rest of our afternoon better we entered ant took every free sample from all of the chocolate shops in central Brussels. Then for dinner we went to our favorite fry shop (behind chocolate, waffles and beer, Belgium is the home of fries and does them eight hundred times better than anywhere else in the world, the key is the double frying) where I consumed a large baguette with hamburger meat, lettuce, onion, fries, and spicy sauce on it. We also befriended the workers, as Belgians are the nicest people ever and speak like four languages each, who then let us sample things for free which created a constant craving for pineapple curry sauce on fries that I will never be able to fulfill again.

Heaven in a Sandwhich

Chocolate

Sunday we took a train from Brussels to Bruges, a small quaint town on the coast. I love Bruges, I believe that these are my people. To prove it look at this, Bruges in Flemish is Brugge, making the people of Brugge - Brugge men...Bruggemann. I think I was lied to all of my life. Besides seeing half of my last name and the family nickname everywhere I went, I also loved this town for it's adorable bridges and cobblestone streets filled with colorful buildings and houses and the smell of great food from everywhere. The main square is built around a large clock tower and his home to several cute restaurants and shops, my favorite square was a two minute walk from the center and was called Berg. Berg is home to the Brugge chocolate shop, a local guy makes phenomenal hand made chocolates there and sells them for a quarter of the price as everywhere else, we gave him quite a bit of business. We then stumbled upon the Beer Wall, a really neat place with a glass wall filled with bottles and their corresponding glasses from all over. In the back you can sample various beers from the area, we tried the Halve Mann Brewery's Zot, it is the only local family brewery in Brugge. For dinner I got the local favorite, Mussels, and they did not disappoint.