Chocolate, Waffles and Fries...Belgium!

Hello Again!
Last weekend I travelled to Belgium, my last adventure in Europe for my semester abroad. I travelled with three of my really good friends from UWSP, Kassandra, Sami and Andrew. We took a red-eye Eurostar train from London St. Pancras and in 2 hours and 15 min, we were in Brussels! I am so glad I was able to travel via the Eurostar, it was suck a great experience. As my mom asked, how did I get across the Channel? The answer is that we went under the Channel, through a tunnel. It was the same one I took to get to Paris when I was on a coach bus in February. We stayed at a nice hostel, a little northwest of the city center of Brussels. We didn't take any formal tours, so I will try my best to explain the pictures!!

Friday, April 6th
We had a really early train from St. Pancras. We had visited the station a few weeks ago in my London history class, so here are the pictures from that:

St. Pancras is a huge station! Built in the 1860s, St. Pancras was built at the hight of Victorian London. There's lots of controversy around the rail system here in London. The railroad companies would lay tracks and build stations literally wherever they felt would be the best. This massive project of laying tracks displaced 100s of families, creating many urban slums and areas of homelessness. 

A hotel was built next to the entrance of the station for convenience to the passengers. After WWII, the hotel was almost shut down, as was the entire St. Pancras station. 

The yellow train towards the bottom right is a Eurostar train 

This station is absolutely gorgeous inside! It was called the "Cathedral of  the Railways" in its heydays.

Just over 2 hours later, we were in Brussels! This is the Hotel de Ville 

Buildings that surround the Grand-Place Grote Market

It was so cold out on Friday, we didn't take that many pictures

Grand-Place Grote Market

Chocolate shops!! I swear, every other store or every third store was a chocolatier!

City Museum - we went in on Sunday when it was free entry

Grand-Place Grote Market

This was such a cool graffiti wall

Cathedral of Saints Michiels and Goedele 

These marks were on all the beams inside the cathedral. I don't know what they symbolize or mean

Pelican alter!

This was one of the biggest door knockers I've seen!! I could have but three of my hands inside of it!

Palais Royal

Palais Royal

Palais Royal

We didn't realize how high up we were until we saw this!

Cool view of the Cathedral with the Basilique in the background

Sablon

This garden was so green - so pretty!

We had a few problems with the languages here!! :) 

This was a beautiful old string instrument shop. I would have loved to take more pictures inside, but they wouldn't let me

Palais du Justice (under renovations)

WWI and WWII memorial

"The Hotel" - they were very original with names, hahaha :)

The Grand-Place Grote Market was so beautiful at night!

The chocolate shops were even prettier at night

Saturday, April 7th
Today we hoped on a train from Brussels to Brugge. This was quite an adventure! Because we didn't speak french very well, we didn't know Dutch at all, we had to guess at what platforms we needed! Too bad my uncle Pete wasn't there to help translate for us! It was a beautiful day - 50s and sunny - great for walking around and exploring the beautiful city of Brugge!

We all couldn't get over how beautiful Brugge is! With all their canals, we felt like we were in Italy or somewhere in the Mediterranean 

The churches and cathedrals dominate the skyline

This was a beautiful market area 

Working family houses in the past - they now are very very expensive homes!

Houses were the poor could live - their only requirement to live there was to pray for the wealthy who housed them

Swans were everywhere!

These last few pictures were taken on our tour of the city - in a horse drawn carriage! My friend Sami has two horses back home and when she saw they had city tours, she had to take one. They were the same price as the canal boat tour we were looking to go on, so it wasn't too bad! And, it was really really fun too

Half way through the horse tour, we stopped here to give the horse a break. There was this horse fountain that they used to fill up water buckets for the horses

In the right corner is the Basilica of the Holy Blood - a vial of Christ's blood that was taken during the Crusades is stored inside. It was beautiful inside

Inside the Monasterium De Wijngaard this field was covered in yellow daffodils!!  

Waffles! This was probably the best food on the trip :) Andrew of course finished his before Sami was anywhere near eating half of hers!

We had about an hour before we needed to be at the train station to get back to Brussels, so the four of us stopped at a Belgium pub and tried some of the local beers

Needless to say, we thought they were good :)

Sunday, April 8
Today was our last day in Belgium. Brussels is a lot more enjoyable when it's not 30' and raining, so we definitely had a lot more fun today exploring the city! It was so warm and sunny, we ended up coming back to the hostel to bring our jackets back!

Yes, this is the Godiva chocolate factory!! I kind of felt like Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory :) Too bad they didn't have tours!

Do you see that gray building at the end of the white Godiva factory? That was our hostel :)

View from the top of Parking 58. We got a really nice map at our hostel that was made for backpackers on a budget and it told us to go here for the best views of the city. Can't complain!!

The Basilique (more pictures later)

Atomium - this was the weirdest, most random touristy thing I have ever seen in a city yet! More pictures later

Cathedral of Saints Michiels and Goedele

Manneken Pis - yes, a statue of a boy peeing :) It's Brussel's beloved fountain, they dress the little boy up in different costumes throughout the year. All his costumes were on display in the City Museum 

We laughed when we saw how small he was since he is practically Brussels' mascot! 

See! He's everywhere

Muscles are a delicacy in Belgium so we had to get some for lunch

Atomium - this was so weird! It's giant metal balls that you can pay to go up in. I have no idea why they were built, but they are huge!! 

Since the theme of our weekend was "Belgium on a Budget" we decided to skip going up inside them and take pictures from outside instead

Basilique du Sacré Coeur and Parc Elisabeth 

Basilique du Sacre Coeur

We walked all the way up, but there was a service taking place so we couldn't go inside at the time

Beautiful park! There were so many little kids playing soccer ("football" as they call it)

Belgium was such a fun trip! I am glad I was able to go with 3 of my favorite people on my semester abroad too, as they all graduate in May. I am so thankful I was able to explore Europe as much as I did! I will definitely have to come back in the future and explore even more!