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Oh Brussels. Definitely a great trip, although it was quite short.
We got into Brussels early afternoon on Friday, but we were so exhausted for almost 15 hours of travel. Mary Catherine and I checked into our hostel and passed out for a nice nap until Jill came. Now Jill, who is studying abroad in Germany, came to visit me (now I'm studying abroad in Spain, in case you forgot) in Brussels, Belgium for a weekend. Pretty crazy if you ask me. We ventured into the city for lunch and accidently sat down at a Lebanese restaurant where no one spoke English. The food was decent but it was definitely an unconventional introduciton to Brussels. After we went back to the hostel to meet up with Jill's friend, making our foursome complete. We then returned to the city center for dinner by the Grand Place, which at night is lit up with different colors, a beautiful sight to see. After a quick trip to the chocolate shop, we returned to the hostel, where we enjoyed our first Belgian beers at the bar.
The next day, we woke up to head to Brugge, a medieval town about an hour outside of Brussels. The city was beautiful, all cobblestone streets with horse drawn carriages, surrounded by canals. We took a boat tour of the canals and got a quick view of the little village, then ate traditional Belgian meals of stew and mussels. We returned to Brussels to check out the European Parliament, because Brussels is the home of a variety of European Union offical buildings. Again, I was reminded of why I LOVE learning about the EU, when I saw the collection of photos with key events in recent European history that was outside the EP. Gosh it was just so cool. I might have been the only one to be moved by it, but I was. I can't really explain it more than that...
Now that I get my nerd rant out of the way--we ended our night with a beer tasting of "6 Tasty Traditional Belgian beers." Much of the weekend involved finding the best fries/waffle/chocolate/beer places and spending time together, catching up, swapping abroad stories and just enjoying each other's company. It was such a great trip because it was so relaxed, we saw what we heard was the best to see, enjoyed the local atmosphere and getting to know Europe's capital as best as we could in a short time.
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