When we got in we decided to head for our hostel, since it was like a 25-ish minute walk from the train station. We got there, checked in, dropped some of our stuff off, and went out to explore a bit and find food. Our hostel ended up actually being right across the street from the Brussels Botanical Gardens, which was pretty cool, so we explored that for a bit.
We were also right down the street from St. Maria's Cathedral, which is this really gorgeous old abandoned parish. We found a tiny patisserie near it, got baguettes for lunch, and some fruit from a stand, and sat around it eating. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel and sat around for a bit doing homework and just relaxing. There was a cool bar there, so we mostly hung out there and planned what we were going to do on Saturday, since we anticipated that would be the day we'd really get to see the city. We got dinner at this tiny little hole-in-the-wall vaguely French/Italian restaurant a few blocks away and turned in sorta early.
The next morning we hit up a Comic Strip Museum, which was super awesome because they were celebrating their 20 year anniversary. They had live music and whatnot while we were there and other things planned for later in the day, but we got there very early so we didn't see a lot. The guy who we bought our tickets from was very curious about where we were from and when we explained where we're studying he attempted to speak Dutch to us, since apparently Dutch and French are the two national languages of Brussels, but we told him we couldn't understand him. It totally baffled me that he's nearly fluent in three (or maybe even more) languages. He was really nice and he even gave us this really nice English-translation booklet for all the exhibits so that we didn't have to decipher the French.
Afterwards, we wandered into the center of the city and to this cute little market. I ended up getting a bag for 15 euro, which was my only real purchase of the weekend beyond food (and a new backpack, that was sort of necessary), because I really needed a good bag with a body strap since I'm really paranoid about pickpocketers and purse-stealers.
What we did not expect about Brussels was that it has a HUGE middle-eastern population. There were brown-skinned women in head-scarves everywhere. And the hostel we stayed in was conveniently in the Turkish neighborhood. Almost everyone you see who's begging for change in the city is a Turkish woman.
We walked to Grand Place, which is like the main square in the city. We were not expecting it to be nearly as gorgeous as it was. We got lunch at this tiny little restaurant off a side street and then wandered back to get some waffles. We also ended up running into some other castle students who were in the city this weekend as well and Sam split off with them to go to a museum or something.
Here's me eating my waffle in Grand Place!
We wandered away from Grand Place because we'd heard of some cool shops nearby. We ended up stopping at this tiny thrift-like shop, as well as two record shops, which were all really cool. All of the store-owners were really nice to us, asking where we're from and what we're doing in Brussels. Nicole, Kendra, and Paige ended up buying a lot, but I didn't really get anything since I was trying to conserve money.
After that we headed in the direction of the Royal Palace, which had some amazing views on the way. Brussels is actually a lot hillier than you'd think. You can pretty much see the whole city from this spot.
It was very windy.
Only in Brussels.
Brussels is also apparently well-known for its peeing statues. The Mannekin Pis is its most famous statue and we were lucky enough to see it. He was dressed up in some sort of uniform, which was really cute. There was a huge crowd around him too so we had to fight to get close.
Afer that we went to the Bellevue Museum, which is a sort of historical museum right next to the Royal Palace (in the Royal Palace square thingy). It was pretty cool. We were really tired by now so we couldn't appreciate a lot of it (especially since most of it was in French too) but some of the exhibits were presented in really neat ways, so it kept us awake. The guy at the ticket counter was especially interested about our school and what we were studying.
This is the Royal Palace, which Nicole was dying to see. The flag was raised, which apparently means that the royal family is home. But we were warned by someone working at the hostel that even if the flag is raised the family is usually at their country home in the Belgian countryside.
We walked back to our hostel after this since it was beginning to rain. We sat around the bar doing work for a bit, and around dinnertime wandered out to find something to eat. We found a tiny middle eastern restaurant and got falafels and gyros. I've literally never had a better falafel in my life. The food was SO good. We also got some frites with our meal. It was only 5 euro and the food was truly incredible.
The next morning after checking out we wandered back into the city center. Here are Kendra, Paige, and Nicole looking very lost.
The Brussels Marathon was also actually going on this weekend, so the whole of Grand Place was fenced off and packed with people. Every time someone would run or bike by everyone would cheer. There was everyone from little kids to old people walking around with numbers pinned to their chests.
We also stopped by a chocolate shop before we headed back to the train station, because who can resist Belgian chocolate?
We finally made it to the train station around 1 and took the 1:11 train back to The Netherlands. It's weird, but when the signs finally turned from French to Dutch we all felt like we were home. It was a really nice weekend.
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