Belgium = Christmas!

I just had a really great weekend in Belgium. Unfortunately my time to write about it in my blog is very limited because I've got a big paper due in two days and another two papers due next Monday, all in Spanish.. a bit scary.

Regardless, we arrived in Brussels on Friday morning after a bit of an exciting flight which involved in emergency landing in Girona, Spain (everything turned out fine). We headed to our youth hostel which was really quite nice. We dedicated the day to exploring Brussels and I found it absolutely adorable. The smell of Brussels is amazing - chocolate, nuts, pastry shop - and our timing worked out perfectly - they just put up all of their Christmas lights and trees around the city. They had little stores all over that were selling Christmas things and special holiday food. If I can describe our experience in one sentence: "I put on 5 pounds of happiness this weekend!"

The city is perfectly old Europe - beautiful old buildings, huge plazas, cobblestone streets, but it has undergone it's own amount of modernization and has lots of new stores. We did lots of shopping and just walking around and exploring. We had some dinner and stopped at a tavern to get a taste of some of the infamous Belgium beer, but we headed back to our hostel early because we were tired from traveling and it was unfortunately raining quite hard. The night ended with us all soaked like wet rats after our walk back.

The next morning we got up early to take a train trip to a small city that is nearby, Brugge. Brugge is also adorable and reminds me of all things Christmas. It is interestingly known as the "Venice of the north" - it has canals throughout the city, but it doesn't quite have the same watery feel because it still has streets and cars, etc... We walked around exploring the plazas and old building and stopped for some sandwiches for lunch. Afterwards we took a boat tour on the canal which was a lot of fun and entertaining because it was done simultaneously in three languages by one very talented and peculiar boat driver. In the late afternoon we went to an ice show, which was awesome! They had amazingly intricate ice sculptures and even had two ice slides we got to ride down. They had an ice bar and a movie theater. Unfortunately it was wayyy too cold in there to stay too long. I think my toes were on the very of hypothermia.

We headed back on the train to Brussels to get dinner and go out in the evening. The bar we stopped at, Delirium, is famous in Belgium. It is guaranteed to have over 2000 types of beer available - the most commercially available in the world as written in the Guinness Book of World Records! We didn't drink much, but we tried some local beer and then some flavored - chocolate, cherry, peach and more. Who knew they made these kinds of beer? But they were all quite good!

Overall, I had a fabulous weekend. Belgium is really chill - no crazy partying - just time to relax and enjoy ourselves. We had to head home quite early on Sunday morning so we actually arrived in Alicante before noon. That was helpful for me because I have LOTS of work to do. Currently, I am greatly missing the warm feeling I got from sipping hot coco and snacking on waffles while walking down cobblestone streets with Christmas lights illuminating the way. Back to the library!