Brussels or Bust

This past weekend I was able to visit some friends in Brussels, Belgium during my first of two 4-day weekends this month (the next begins tomorrow and I am Austria bound!)

The cool thing about having friends in Europe also is that you don't have to pay for a hostel AND you have your own personal tour guides/hosts! Dana, Kelly, Adrianna, Raha, Ben, Iman and several others were most gracious hosts to me: showing me around the city, making sure I tried the local cuisine (and lots of it), and even giving up a bed!

My first night in Brussels we went to a local bar/venue called Madame Moustache to hang out, dance, and enjoy the live music (french alternative rock, anyone?). Friday we slept in (thank goodness!) and then hit the highlights of the city, including my first Belgian waffle topped with Belgian chocolate. YUM. How is it that all of these European cities are just SO great?!

That night we were treated to homemade dinner thanks to another visiting friend/amateur chef. I attempted to be a decent sous-chef and the end result was quite tasty. We decided to keep it low key that night, watching old movies and sipping Calimocho (red wine & coke), a popular Spanish drink that I introduced to the group. How very European of us!

Saturday we took a train to Antwerp, another Belgian city about an hour away. Although it was a bit cold and rainy, we had a BLAST stumbling onto TWO parades: one for Summer Solstice (we think) and the other celebrating gay pride. So much fun - we really couldn't have planned it any better. Later we returned home to make Tapas for dinner (but not before stopping to get some Frites!) before heading out to another bar/club called Delirium. If you ever get the chance to have Frites in Belgium, I highly recommend it. Frites are like twice-fried french fries topped with your choice of local sauce and served with a tiny plastic Frites fork!

I had an early flight on Sunday and had to return home to start studying for my finals of the June session (can you believe it?!) but couldn't have asked for a better weekend with friends! I finished out the last 3 days of the June session strong and am packed and ready to leave tomorrow for Austria - it never ends!





As always, more pictures on Facebook. Thanks for reading!

Evan