Brussels//Mini Europe

Failing to take a picture where it looks like we like each other

Ringing the tiny doorbell

The Pisa group (minus one)

The card I got in my email later

There's no way I couldn't dedicate a whole post to Mini Europe. It's probably the strangest, silliest place I've been. For one thing the mascot in an orange turtle. It's located at the foot of the Atomium. All of the buildings are on a scale of 1:25 and it's incredible how much work goes into every detail. One of the silliest things that the park has to offer is a button in front of every monument that plays the national anthem of that country. There is a ferris wheel that spins, Mount Vesuvius erupts, a bull fight happens and a space ship takes off! It's definitely an experience I recommend to anyone visiting Brussels. I was most excited to see the monuments I'm going to visit in real life this week.

I finished my midterms yesterday and my fall break starts tomorrow. It seems insane that I had four days of class and I'm off again. This will be the longest trip I'm taking and I'm both nervous (mostly for packing) and excited! I feel like I barely got time to breathe while I was in Florence this week and already I'm leaving again! Wish me luck on my adventures and be on the look out for pictures, I'm going some exciting places! (Though no where as exciting as mini europe!)

Brussels//Part 2

Photo-bombin

Day two in Brussels was just as fun as the first, also as weird. We woke up around 11 and wandered around looking for a place to eat brunch. We ended up in the financial district where everything was closed and wandered around for about two hours. We ended up making a giant loop and just eating down the street from the hostel. After brunch we went to the room for a minute and without ever discussing it all of us got into our beds and fell asleep. I found this hilarious because if anyone had suggested napping we all would have said "this is our only full day in Brussels, we shouldn't waste it." After about an hour of much needed sleep we headed to *drum roll please*.....MINI EUROPE! It combines all of my favorite things - quirky, tourist, architecture and little. It is exactly what it sounds like. It looks like a mini golf course for the most part and has all of the major monuments that countries in the EU have to offer, but in miniature form. It was weird though...why, just why? I've decided that due to the over 100 photos I took, I am going to dedicate a whole post to it (later). There are just too many pictures to put in one blog post, but there are a couple preview shots in this one. We got to see the atomium, but we didn't go in it due to time restrictions. Instead we got to eat waffles with chocolate sauce, proabably better.

For dinner we went into the old city and went to a restaurant Chloe found called Chez Léon. Chloe and I had been talking about moules frites, mussels with fries, since the plane ride. The entire table got mussels and they were so, SO good. I got mine with white wine sauce. The mussels were fresh and the fries were never-ending. We split a bottle of wine and spent several hours eating, joking and digesting. Afterwards we went over to the Grand Place (which I actually put pictures of in Brussels part 1) which I recognized from mini Grand Place! We took pictures and wandered around for a while, stopping in at a souvenir shop and going to a couple chocolate shops. In the souvenir stores they sell so many statues of manneken pis, which were the worst. I got a mini atomium for my curio cabinet though. We headed to bed early since we had to get up at seven, it was also pretty chilly which I wasn't used to! Timing worked out well because we got back to Florence around two which gave us alot of the day to do work, or in my case watch tv in bed. Brussels was a lot of fun, but it really is a strange place. The group I traveled with was so laid back and easy going! I couldn't have found a better travel group. Stay tuned for more Mini Europe! 

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.