Brussels is dirty, in more than one way…

So our first impression of Brussels was a tired blurrrrrrrrrrrrr. We barely slept Thursday night due to our 6 a.m. flight so we just lollygagged in Brussels until our 7pm train to Bruges. However, arriving back from Bruges Sunday night at 10 pm left us with a terrible second impression of this city.

Looking at a map we realized that we’re probably a 10-15 minute walk from the Nord train station to our hotel. All was going well until we walked straight into the Red Light District. (Who knew Brussels had one! Rick Steves did not mention anything about this.) Women wearing lingerie were just hanging out in storefront windows, smoking a cigarette underneath some red neon lights. It was time to turn around and catch a cab. I wish I snuck a picture in, but it seemed rude.

In the end our hotel wasn’t in this exact neighborhood, but knowing this exists a couple streets down, doesn’t make us feel so safe. Our hotel room is nice and big through. We’ve got pretty skylights and a bathtub for a bubble bath (no shower though).

The old town of Brussels now isn’t so bad. The town square is beautiful with all its gilded architecture. The beer, gaufre (waffles), chocolates, and frites (French fries with mayo) are all great.

gaufre!

chocolate! Godiva man making chocolate covered strawberries!


I think we just miss the quaintness, tranquility of Bruges and its bikes. :(



On a side note:

The mascot of Brussels is Mannequin Pis. It's a little boy peeing! It apparently symbolizes the city's irreverence and love of the good life :) hence a little boy urinating.... The city commisioned it show the joie de vivre of living in Brussels. I mean... idk if life in Brussels is that great, but apparently, happy people eat, drink.... and drink... and then pee. Sometimes he's even dressed up in costumes given to him as gifts from all over the world.

The Magritte Museum:

Brussels likes student discounts. Actually, they like letting art students into museums for free! :) Anyway, this museum was amazing. If you know the work by Rene Magritte of a pipe with the words "This is not a pipe" then you know who this artist is.

The Magicalness of Brugge! Aka Bruges, aka Brujas

This tiny little town is fantastic! It’s full of history, bicycles, shock-a-laliers, and hints of Colin Ferril. Most guidebooks suggest spending a day to soak in this city, but we wanted to spend forever in this tiny town. In the end, with all our hotel reservations set we only had 48 hours in Brugge. The best was finding a map made by locals for young people that marked all the cool local spots in the city.

Highlights:

The Chocolate Line:

where grandmas get their chocolate. This is not a normal chocolatier but a shock-a-latier! The Havana cigar chocolate is made out of Cuban cigars! (illegal in the US) The wine-vinegar chocolate is surprisingly delicious, and there’s even a Coca-cola chocolate that tastes exactly like coca-cola!

Countryside bicycle tour:

We rented bikes for 24 hours and took a day trip to a near by town of Damme. 20 minutes later, following a canal, past lots of farmland, horses, and cows, we made it! Upon arriving, the town was having a race. It was cute because even grandmas and grandpas participated in it. Families and supporters hung around the finish line, clapping for everyone passing by. Afterwards, we tried to make it to the ocean, which was supposed to be 40 minutes away. However, everyone we asked for directions gave us different advice. An hour later, we found our canal again and peddled back home; we were tired and sore. Even though we never made it the ocean, our countryside adventures were awesome!

Beer:
Our map by locals pointed us towards some cool locations for our Saturday night beer outing. The nice bartender gave us some great suggestions based on what we were looking for in a beer. At our second place we had some Garre beer. It came in awesome glasses. (And no, we didn’t steal them; that would have been rude.)

Picnics:

The one thing we miss is the 10euro prix fix lunch menu in Spain. It’s hard to find inexpensive Taste. Therefore, we’ve been picnicking a lot. It’s actually fun and exciting because we go to bread and meat shops and actually feel like locals buying groceries! We pack everything into the mochilla on our bikes and peddle away to a park or bench for a delicious picnic.

Juliette’s:

This breakfast-lunch-tea room is super mono! The mother-daughter restaurant had delicious goat cheese, apple, and honey salads, as well as croquette misseuir (ham and cheese sandwich, very typical Flemish food.) The té was superb; and did I mention that it came in the cutest tea pots ever?

Meh highlights:

The Bell Tower:

373 steps of a super narrow passage used to go up and down by hundreds of people a day results in human tunnel traffic! The only disappointment arose from the "limited panoramic view due to construction." Umm... basically, we only had two wire-frame windows to look out of. Not as fun as Colin Farrell made it seem in the movie "In Bruges."

I <3 Brugge!

BCN does not know how to handle natural disasters…

such as heavy* snowfall. Jaja

There are layers of ice on the street, and I almost fell down three times walking the 100 meters to my metro stop.





I had to walk around obstacles such as fallen tree branches.

Monday night the metro shut down during rush hour for 2 hours. Buses and ferrocarrils (another fancy word for metro trains) shut down completely. The government ordered reduced rates in all hotels for the stranded commuters who could not get home. Girona, a city two hours away, lost all its electricity.

I’m just happy my Tuesday morning class got canceled, but that meant more time to work on studio stuff...

But then Plaza Catalunya and all of southern Barcelona was gorgeous with no sign of snow...

At least I can tell people I was in Barcelona during the worst* snowfall they’ve seen in 25 years jaja

*relatively speaking

This is not my life.

begining of January, when asked if it snows in BCN
“Very rarely. It snows in Barcelona once every 7 years.” -Magda Bernaus

2 months later…
View outside my window.

1 hour later…

Words cannot describe my anger and disappointment for this “(a)typical Barcelona weather.”

I signed up for blue sunny skies! la playa! dresses! warmth! I was supposed to leave Chicago and Pittsburgh weather behind. So far we’ve had lots of coldness, rain, and now snow. Only a handful of sunshine and days above 60.

What happened? I miss this day!

This really makes me want to cry because everyone's fb status is about Aruba, Florida, Cancun, or other warm and sunny places. ;( Mother Nature, why do you hate on BCN so much?

Alhambra, you’re so cold! Gypsies, you’re not so bad.

I’m behind by like 6 posts :( and this weekend I’m heading to Madrid, so I couldn’t leave without trying to catch up on past trips. The sad part is, I forgot all the funny anecdotes that I try to write about vs. a sharing a boring recount of my experience.

Therefore, enjoy the photos! And first ever video post :)

Alhambra! got to love the artsiness of photostitch :)

Below are a series of pics from our walking tour...

Say hello to Alfonso! He's so cute and I love his accent when he spoke english!

Los Reyes Catolicos! They built this beautiful Capilla Royal (Royal Chapel) for themselves in Granada since they were the ones who won over this last arabic city and joined the nation together with their marriage. They've also left enough fortune to have a mass held in their name everyday.

strange... a used mattress and a broken exercising machine. typical.

A sneak-peek into someone's "carmen" which means a house and a garden in arabic? maybe. you have to be pretty well off in Granada to have a carmen.

It's like mini-Morocco over in Granada. Even though they expelled the arabes and Jews, a lot of customs stayed behind.

like traditional tea houses! they were super mono (cute).

view of the "Caves" where gypsies live(d).

Pudding hot-chocolate and churos. super intense! but best hot-chocolate ever, IMO.

friends: Liliana and Hannah-Hunt

Tour of Alhambra photos

I'm trying to say warm. My feet froze in this arabic castle. While sunny Granada was much warmer than BCN this time of year, the Alhambra was freezing!

Now imagine this painted in red, blue, yellow, and green colors! That's how beautiful this place was 500 years ago.

The 11 lions around this fountain are MIA for restoration purposes. They tired to take the fountain out of the Alhambra too, but couldn't get it through any doors! So they built this display case for it instead for restorers to work in.

The Generalife Gardens, aka the summer place where it was much cooler for the arabic princes, sultans, etc to say in.

They say it's prettier here in the summer when the flowers are in full bloom, but this was beautiful enough for me :)

Enjoying a menu del dia price fixed lunch with some Magda-bucks.

Yay for friends and pitchers of sangria :)

Saturday night flamenco dinner and show!

The show was great!

Had tons of tapas for dinner but the dessert was the best. This was shared with 4 people, and the ice cream with pomegranates brenched in liquior was delicious! We stole everyone elese's left overs ;)

Did you know: Granada means pomegranate? It's the fruit of the city!