Our trip started with us running though the Dublin airport to catch our flight. The cheap airline to fly here in Europe is called Ryanair. They have great prices but horrible service... you get what you pay for, right?! ;) Luckily for us that extends into long waiting lines during the boarding process. If the flight hadn't taken SO long to board we would have been left in the dust for sure.
We had booked a place to stay through Airbnb and while I read the reviews and thought I found the perfect place to stay with a once again awesome rate I learned again.... you get what you pay for. Now honestly the apartment was beautiful, recently redone and the owner was so, so nice. However I booked this trip before the recent terrorist attacks and we learned that we were staying in the same neighborhood as the terrorists. In fact there had been some police raids while other airbnbers had been there just a few weeks earlier.
Luckily once we arrived the owner of the apartment told us how to avoid the worst areas and we were fine. We even found a new love for Turkish food as we were staying in a Turkish district. I never knew Kababs could be so amazing!
Our first day in the city it poured and poured. Not just rain but freezing rain. Honestly you would think that living in Dublin for that last 6+ months would have prepared me for that but nope... I was really cold all day. So after eating a few Waffles and walking around the city a bit we decided to walk though one of the museums to warm up.
The best part of the museum was their focus on the Manekin Pis. So the Manekin Pis is basically a small statue of a little boy peeing, but it has become somewhat of a national symbol for Belgium representing liberty and freedom. They also dress up the little guy in different outfits each day and countries like the US and Ireland send outfits to the Belgium Government as gifts for him to wear. Inside the museum we got to see some of these... Can you tell which countries these "gifts" are from?
Yes you guessed it. An Irish country man and Elvis... pretty funny right? Jake did some research and found that in Brussels there is also a statue of a little girl peeing.... so we went on a search to find it.
This is the best picture we could get of her as she was behind bars, but yes she is squatting and yes she is amazing!!!
Day 2 went quite a bit better. We traveled up to Ghent which is a darling little town on the outskirts of Brussels. It has the largest area of pedestrian walkway in Europe so it was filled with cute cobblestone streets and winding paths to explore. We ate lunch in an old butcher shop from the middle ages that has been turned into a restaurant and the food was AMAZING!
One of the things I loved most was St. Bavo's Cathedral. It was incredible inside and probably the most beautiful church I have ever seen. Besides that we climbed to the top of the Belfry and checked out an old Castle build in the middle ages and used as a torture chamber. The Castle had a little museum of the torture devices used. It was honestly like we stepped right into the movie Princess Bride.
I was SO nervous that putting MK on that old gross throne was going to give her the black plague, but Jake really wanted a picture and well.... he was right. She is still healthy so far and we got a great shot.
Day 3 - The weather was BEAUTIFUL so we decided to spend the day outside visiting the Atomium which was what Brussels built for the World Fair many years ago. In other words Paris has the Eiffel Tower and Brussels has the Atomium. The grounds were perfect and after enjoying the scenery and eating a hamburger for lunch (Jake's choice and I don't even know if they were made with real meat), we headed on over to Mini Europe. Haha it was like a miniature golf course but without the golf. It showcased the main attractions in the various European countries. It was actually surprisingly lots of fun and probably my favorite day we spent there.
One the way back to our apartment we stopped once again into the city center of Brussels to get some more cheap waffles and of course check out what the Manikin Piss was wearing that day.
Day-4 Our final day of this trip... this is where the story gets a little sour again. So it's Monday morning. I wake up to look at our flight itinerary for the next day and discover that we were actually suppose to leave Monday not Tuesday and that our flight had already left. Well I thought ok no big deal we will just stay one more night and leave tomorrow as planned.... but wait, the airbnb was only booked through Monday as well, not Tuesday. So bags were packed quickly, new flights for that day were bought and we left the house with all of our things still determined to see Bruges trailing with us our luggage. Can I just say that through this whole ordeal Jake was a saint. It was totally my fault for not double checking things and I was the one who planned it all. I guess I just need to ask him to audit me more often... hehe.
Bruges was nice. There was a quiet canal that runs through the town. Some people call it the Venice of the north. We took a little boat cruise and just walked around a bit. Afterwards we caught a bus to the airport and actually made our flight this time... thank goodness! Oh and lugging around our luggage wasn't too bad either. Turns out in most train terminals they have lockers that we were all too happy to use.
We are now home safe and sound. I have learned to pay attention to the details and to look for the tender mercies of the Lord daily in our lives because though this whole experience we saw his hand countless times.
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