Brussels//Part 1

Nicoise salad and croque madame

Being silly in my sleeping bag

This weekend I went to Brussels with Olivia, Grace, David and Chloe. The whole weekend definitely had a theme, awesome and weird, which also perfectly describes Brussels. We left on Friday morning and took the bus from Florence to the Pisa airport. We took a plane from Pisa to Brussels and then about an hour bus ride into the center of Brussels. Chloe who took the reigns on planning the trip found a great hostel that was centrally located, clean and cheap! We dropped our stuff at the hostel and then went out to eat. We wandered around the area near our hostel which only had Middle Eastern food, which looked ok, but we wanted something typical of Brussels. It was a weird time so most places were closed. We found a little cafe and had a drink until they started serving dinner. I had a nicoise salad and a croque madam. Both were delicious! I tried a couple different beers, but Palm was my favorite. Beer in Brussels is so cheap!

After dinner we made our way towards the center of Brussels and went to a bar to hang out until it was time to go out. We tried to go to a couple other bars which were pretty crowded and expensive. We ended up going to a club because we all, by that I mean me, wanted to dance. A girl there was celebrating her birthday and we joined her in doing so. I had such a fun time dancing the night away and drinking champagne to toast to our new friend's birthday! 

Brussels is very beautiful, especially in the Grand Place were most of these pictures were taken. An example of Brussels being weird is that the emblem of the city is a statue of a little boy peeing, known as Manneken Pis. I did not take pictures of it, because I hate it. There are several legends about its origin. One legend particularly weird to me "tells of a wealthy merchant who, during a visit to the city with his family, had his beloved young son go missing. The merchant hastily formed a search party that scoured all corners of the city until the boy was found happily urinating in a small garden. The merchant, as a gift of gratitude to the locals who helped out during the search, had the fountain built..." So strange, so weird.