Bonjour! I have a lot to report on with regard to the past week and weekend so I will probably split it up into two, focusing on the week and Bruxelles in one and Brugge in the other. Wednesday my International Business class met at "Breakfast In America", the best diner I have ever been to; it was better than in the USA. I had dark chocolate chip pancakes that were absolutely divine along with a bottomless cup of coffee, something that is non-existant in Paris. The whole atmosphere of the diner made me feel as if I were at home. The staff was friendly and the class thoroughly enjoyed our time there.
Thursday I went to the Musee Carnavalet with my fashion class. Our professor gave us a guided tour of the museum, which is located in the heart of Le Marais, a neighborhood of the city that is close to my school. The tour was wonderful and I got to see lots of paintings, sculptures, and other works of art.
Late Thursday evening, my friend Sam and I headed to Gare du Nord, one of several Paris train stations, to catch our train to Brussels (Bruxelles in French). The train was not crowded, so we were able to sit together comfortably spread out. The train, a TGV, only took 1 hour and 22 minutes to get to Bruxelles. When we arrived in Bruxelles, we immeadiately could tell we were not in Paris anymore. People were actually coming up to us, attempting to help us figure out how to get to our hostel--this would never happen in Paris. We finally found our way to the right metro and made our way to the hostel. Upon arrival, I found my roommate and best friend from Pitt, Libby, sitting in the lobby. We ran to each other and hugged--we were both so happy to see e a familiar face,I'm pretty sure we both were on the verge of tears. After checking in and putting our luggage in our hostel room, we walked towards Grand Place, a huge plaza where the Hotel de Ville (city hall), is located. We met up with Libby's friends from Spain (where she is studying) and headed to dinner. And so the eating began...I tried my first Belgian beer, very tart and powerful, and had a light dinner of aubergine gratinee (eggplant that has been baked with melted cheese over it). By the time we were through, it was nearly 1230am! We walked home and immeadiately fell asleep.
Friday, Libby, Sam, and I walked around the city for about 7 hours! We walked through Grand Place again, saw Manneken Pis (Bruxelles "mascot"), Palais de Justice, Palace Royal, Notre Dame du Sablon, and a few parks. We also had a self guided tour of the last brewery still located in Bruxelles. It was very interesting to see people working in the factory making beer. The whole process was very cool; we saw the barrels of beer, the containers that it ferments in, the area where the bottles are filled, and how they place the labels on the finished product. At the end of the tour we were told to sit at the bar and the woman who worked at the front desk gave us two different beers. I am
not a huge fan of beer, I prefer wine, but I must admit that both beers were delicious. The first one was very yellow and had a strong taste of lemon. The second one was a pinkish-red color and tasted like red fruits (raspberries, strawberries, ect.). What I liked most about this place was that we were the only tourists there and it was not very commercialized, so it was like finding a hidden treasure; it's definitely something I would recommend others do if you ever get to chance to go to Bruxelles.
One of the highlights of the day was seeing the American flag. I noticed it and then
paused for a second before truly realizing what it was. We all started walking towards it and then realized that we had stumbled upon the American Embassy. We all began taking pictures and then guards started to yell at us from across the street, saying that no pictures were allowed. We stopped taking pictures and began walking towards the metro but a policeman ran after us and asked to see our cameras. He told us,
in french, that we had to delete all pictures of the embassy, as the American Embassy cannot be photographed. We were a little confused, but followed orders and were on our merry way soon enough. By the time we got back to the hostel we had been walking around for 7 hours and had consumed chocolates, waffles, and fries. We topped off the day of calorie-laden food with dinner at Chi-Chi's--a wonderful Tex-Mex chain that was thrown out of the U
SA after it made half of America sick with salmonella poisoning. It was outstanding. By the time we were done with dinner it was past midnight, so we headed back to the hostel and got some sleep because we knew we needed to get up early for Brugge the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment