This past week has been the epitome of spontaneity. Like, if you've seen the movie "Mamma Mia!" Colin Firth's character, Harry, is trying to be spontaneous and it's his excuse for everything. That's a little what I felt like this past week!
This Wednesday I got some last-minute free passes into a Lady GaGa (of the songs "Just Dance" and "Poker Face") performance at the music venue Koko in Camden so my flatmates and a couple of our friends went. It was especially cool because the concert was being filmed for the album chart show series that being aired later in the year here in England. Then this past Monday Kara and I went to an All-American Rejects performance at the same venue for the same album chart show.
The next day my roomie Kara and our friend Jeri randomly decided that they were going to Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium for the weekend, and I hopped onto the decision. So we took the Eurostar train to Brussels from King's Cross/St. Pancras station early Saturday morning.
For starters, it was my first real train ride ever, and it was freaky going under the English Channel in the tunnel. I also got to see quite a bit of the European countryside.
Brussels itself was fantastic. We stayed at Hotel La Madeleine, a small hotel/hostel right in the center of the city. We familiarized ourselves with the area but half the time we had no idea what we were looking at since although everybody there speaks English, almost no signs were in English. Everything was in French or Dutch! Most of what I saw I learned about when I got back to London.
We first saw the Grand Place/Grote Markt. It's a grandly structured little plaza, first construction being in the 1400s. There's gold trimming everywhere and there were little Belgian schoolchildren playing tag and Monopoly in the middle.
Next we walked towards the St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral (Cathedrale Saints-Michel-et-Gudule/Sint-Michiels-en-Sint-Goedelekathedraal), which was constructed in the 1200s. It was pretty cool since we were on the steps of the church when the bells started tolling for 2PM.
After that we walked through the main shopping district in Brussels, where there were, of course, three H&Ms on the same street! After that we went to dinner and then searched for a place to try Belgian beer (one of the Belgian specialties we were told to try while there). We ended up at a place called the Drug Opera, which sounds dangerous but it was actually a very nice place. There we tried framboise, a Beglian beer that is fermented using raspberries. Thus far I haven't found any brews in England that I fancied, but the framboise was delicious! So that was one Belgian specialty down!
The next day we went in search of a statue we had seen pictures of everywhere: the Manneken Pis (also known as the petit-Julien or "little pee man"). It's a statue of a mischievous boy peeing into a fountain off the Grand Place. It was built around 1612 for unknown reasons, but it's become a symbol of Belgian cheekiness. It also has over 160 outfits to its name, donated by Belgium and other countries around the world.
We passed through Brussel's Little Italy on our way to try the king of Belgian delicacies: Belgian waffles! I could go on and on about those waffles. I missed them before I was even finished eating mine! I know I will definitely never be able to eat an Eggo waffle again!
After lunch we picked up another of Belgium's famous specialtiess: Belgian chocolate! Of course, Belgian chocolate is delicious, and I will probably never eat American chocolate again, either!
Our last Belgian specialty was the French fry (or frites). The Belgians claim that they were the ones to invent the French fry, but that's a difficult claim to prove (kind of like Ithaca's Purity saying that they were first to invent the sundae). However, the Belgian frites were delicious and unique in that fact that they're served in a paper cone.
Another Belgian delicacy is the mussel (yes, you must eat mussels in Brussels!), but we never tried it, unfortunately. We also saw the Royal Palace of Brussels (Palais Royal de Bruxelles/Koninklijk Paleis van Brussel), which looked suspiciously similar to Buckingham Palace.
Our last stop was a place you'd expect to be a big draw for me: the Musical Instruments Museum (Musee des Instruments de Musique/Muziekinstrumentenmuseum), otherwise known as the MIM. It contained over 1500 musical instruments, but of course I had to see the exhibit on the Belgian clarinet. :-D
All in all, a wonderful trip!
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