Belgium – April 10-13
(Sorry peeps, I am very behind on my blogging because our homework load has been pretty crazy these last few weeks. And I guess it didn’t help that I just wouldn’t stop traveling, so my only time at home, was spent on essays first, and now that they are finally done, I am writing what I can remember from the past month.)
My Belgium weekend was SOO FUNNNN.
It was probably one of my favorite weekends.
I had booked a TopDeck tour. (Originally to Scotland, but it got cancelled, so I booked Belgium instead.)
TopDeck is a tour company for young people. I have one booked for May 2-11 with friends, but I really wanted to go to one on my own. So this was the one.
I had to be in the Generator Hostel at 6:30am on Friday April 10th, so I came up the night before and stayed with my cousin Ales. It was very nice of him to accommodate me, especially since I got there at 11 at night and left at 5:30 in the morning.
On my way to the hostel, I saw a girl walking in the same direction with a big backpack, so I asked her if she was going on the Belgium trip. She was! We started talking. Her name is Cara and she is from Australia.
We got to the hostel, and started chatting with everyone else on the trip. I had been a little scared that the tour would be a bunch of couples, but I was happily surprised that almost everyone came on their own just like me. The group of about 40 of us was about 85% girls, and well, not many boys. It was also about 80% Australians. You couldn’t get away from them! (JK, they were a good time.) There were a couple Kiwi’s (New Zealanders), one English girl, one South African girl, and 4 Americans, including myself.
We got on the bus and drove to Dover. Dover is the main port town to get across the English channel. We stopped there for a few hours to check out the Dover Castle. I didn’t care much about the castle itself, but what was really cool, was the tour they did of the secret tunnel ways underneath the castle. The original tunnel was built during Napoleon times when the English were fighting against him. The tunnels were a secret place for the Navy to meet and strategize. It was basically a secret base. Then during WWII, they added more layers to the tunnel. Now the tunnel was 3 layers deep. On one layer they had the emergency hospital for WWII soldiers. (They had voices playing of a mock operation while we walked through the operating/surgery room. .. pretty sure the mock soldier didn’t survive..) The tunnels were set up the way they were during the war. All the maps were out for the naval strategizing.. anyway, it was a cool tour.
We got to Belgium and had 2 days in Brugge. I LOVE Brugge. We had a walking tour the first day where our TopDeck leader gave us some brief history. The second day we took a Bike tour where a local took us around and explained the sites we saw. It was beautiful.
I definitely enjoyed Belgian waffles and chocolate J
PICTURES WILL COME AFTER I GET BACK
We also went out every night. It was SO fun. We checked out different bars/clubs each night. The first night, was very funny. There were only about 7 of us that stayed out later than everyone else. On our way home, our tour guide was with us. Even though, everyone had plenty to drink, including him, he was still acting as our leader, and tried to get us home. Being the drunk man that he was, he had no idea where he was going, and it took us 45 minutes to take a 10 minute walk. We definitely made the same circle more than once. (What frustrated me a bit was that I knew where to go, but no one would listen to me!) Well, teased him about it a lot afterwards, so it was all in good fun.
The third day was our trip to Brussels. Dan, our leader, gave us a brief tour of the city. We saw and took pictures of the famous “peeing boy” statue. Check him out on Wikipedia if you don’t know what I am talking about, or just enjoy my picture. Apparently, there are many legends to why he is famous. Wikipedia only explains one.
PICTURES
Sadly, the rest of my time in Brussels was kind of wasted. Everyone was pretty tired and we just sad at a pub, enjoyed great Belgian beers and played cards.
I do have to mention Belgian beers though before we move on. Belgium is one of the top beer making countries in the world, so their beers were great. BUT, what I, and many other girls, found excellent were their fruit beers. I had never before tasted anything like them. They were not cider, but they were FRUIT beers. I tried Cherry beer, Raspberry, Apple, Blackcurrant, and Peach. They were all SO delicious. Oh my. I wish we had this kind of stuff at home. The Cherry one seemed to be the biggest because they had cherry beer at almost every pub.
Anyway, the end of our Brussels experience was quite hysterical, because we lost our tour guide, which wasn’t his fault, but when we found him, he was drunk and wearing a girl’s shirt. He tried to get on the mike and talk to us, but we were all laughing hysterically because he could not make out a sentence without slurring or messing up a word, for example, “I hope you guys had a good day in Brugge..” .. everyone’s all, “We’re in Brussels!” Then he said something that didn’t make sense at all, so he decided to just sit down for a while, which was probably a good idea for him. Ha.
Our last day would have been great except that I had to deal with certain issues that came up. Read about that in the next blog because it has to do more with the next story than this one.
Enjoy my Belgium pictures!!
PICTURES
