Wow....the last 3 days have been quite the adventure and a whirlwind. So on Friday morning, we departed for Brussels, Belgium. Sounds simple, but it was quite the contrary. We left our apartment at 6:30am with our other friend Carleen who is from Cornell and is studying in Florence to walk to the Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence. We got on our 7am train to Bologna Centrale. Once we arrived to Bologna, we took a half hour bus ride to the Bologna airport. Then we went through security(which is nothing compared to the US) and we boarded our flight on time! We also met up with another friend from Cornell at the airport, Delia who was on our same flight! Who would have thought, Europeans take their time doing everything but yet at an airport everything was on time. It was so nice for a change. Then when we arrived to the Brussels Charleroi airport we took another shuttle for 40 minutes to the main city center train station in Brussels. We then took a cab to our hotel, the Radisson Blu around 1pm. Literally the most complicated travel scenario I have been in in awhile and somehow my anxiety was at an all time low! Everything went so smoothly! And thanks to my amazing, wonderfully talented mother, our hotel was beautiful and our room was HUGE! We could not have been happier, but it was time to go out and see Brussels! We were starving so we started walking towards the center of the city when we smelled something delicious.....the frites and Belgian waffles!! What could be better after a long day of travelling...
After we had our sustenance we walked around a bit until we found a museum we might be interested in...the Brussels museum! We thought it would be appropriate since we were in Brussels. And we learned all about this one famous statue in Brussels called the Mannekin-Pis. It is a statue of a little boy peeing. We learned about the significance, but were too busy giggling to really listen. The legend is something like this:
the statue depicts a young boy who saved Brussels from disaster because the enemy was at the gates ready to bring down the city walls with gunpowder. Fortunately, a little boy who happened to be around desperately needed to relieve himself and in doing so he extinguished the fuse. This museum had a million little mannekin-pis statues in one room dressed up in many different costumes.
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| Cowboy Mannekin-Pis |
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| Chef Mannekin-Pis |
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Hockey Playing
Mannekin-Pis |
After the Brussels museum, we found the chocolate museum. It was so cool to watch the chocolatiers at work and the museum itself was so interesting. And it was good prep for my chocolates midterm that I had today!
So after the chocolate museum, we were exhausted and made our way back to the hotel, but not without a few stops at some chocolate stores to buy some belgian chocolate for our families...wait till you see yours mom!!
When we got back to the hotel, we made dinner reservations through our hotel for an apparently good Belgian restaurant. The food was amazing....but the service was appalling!!! Literally our waiter told us he had better things to do when we were asking him questions about a menu written entirely in German and French! Here is a picture of the mussels I had with tomato and basil sauce. The steam makes it look cloudy haha
Then we went home and went to bed since we knew the next day would be a marathon.
On Saturday we woke up early and got ready for our day trip to Brugge. We took an hour long train at 9:20am and when we got to Brugge we were amazed by its beauty. It was the most adorable little fairytale town I've ever seen! It may be my favorite place I have been so far. We actually were with more Cornell people this time in Brussels including a guy which helped when trying to find our way around. It was me, Colleen, Mikey, Carleen, Delia, and Jeff. We first went into a church where we paid one euro to see the Michelangelo sculpture of the Madonna and Child. It was so beautiful. After that, we wanted to climb something (we have to keep the tradition going). We found the tower of the city and decided to wait in line to climb it. Then for lunch we enjoyed fries and waffles again. And after lunch we went on a boat tour around the city and saw some of the most amazing views.
Then we came home from Brugge and got ready to go to the main event of the weekend...Sensation! It was basically and all white rave at an arena an hour away. We did our crazy make-up, got dressed in white and then we were off! It was a great concert, kind of crazy and insane but sooo worth it! And we got picked up around 3am to go back to our hotel where we then got a cab at 4:30 in the morning to get to the airport in time for our 7:50 am flight....and we were back in Florence by noon. It was a crazy fun weekend but now I'm glad to be back home and I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my whole family this Sunday for my spring break!! Time to go 'study' for my midterms...already had two today! My next trips coming up are all with my family and I am so excited! Cinque Terra next week and Rome for Easter!
xoxo
Alli
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| Carleen, Me, Colleen |
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| Me and Colleen getting ready for Sensation |
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| Crazy Acrobatics |
Wow....the last 3 days have been quite the adventure and a whirlwind. So on Friday morning, we departed for Brussels, Belgium. Sounds simple, but it was quite the contrary. We left our apartment at 6:30am with our other friend Carleen who is from Cornell and is studying in Florence to walk to the Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence. We got on our 7am train to Bologna Centrale. Once we arrived to Bologna, we took a half hour bus ride to the Bologna airport. Then we went through security(which is nothing compared to the US) and we boarded our flight on time! We also met up with another friend from Cornell at the airport, Delia who was on our same flight! Who would have thought, Europeans take their time doing everything but yet at an airport everything was on time. It was so nice for a change. Then when we arrived to the Brussels Charleroi airport we took another shuttle for 40 minutes to the main city center train station in Brussels. We then took a cab to our hotel, the Radisson Blu around 1pm. Literally the most complicated travel scenario I have been in in awhile and somehow my anxiety was at an all time low! Everything went so smoothly! And thanks to my amazing, wonderfully talented mother, our hotel was beautiful and our room was HUGE! We could not have been happier, but it was time to go out and see Brussels! We were starving so we started walking towards the center of the city when we smelled something delicious.....the frites and Belgian waffles!! What could be better after a long day of travelling...
After the Brussels museum, we found the chocolate museum. It was so cool to watch the chocolatiers at work and the museum itself was so interesting. And it was good prep for my chocolates midterm that I had today!
So after the chocolate museum, we were exhausted and made our way back to the hotel, but not without a few stops at some chocolate stores to buy some belgian chocolate for our families...wait till you see yours mom!!
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