thanksgiving break part three: brussels, belgium

we awoke to our last morning in dublin with snoww!!!! it was the first snow ive seen since being in europe. walking out of hostel at 5am to catch our flight and we saw this...

after changing gates 3 times at the dublin airport and a 2 hour delay, we finally got to brussels (oh and after a 45 minute bus ride to the city center since the airport was very south of the city). we had no idea where our hostel was or really where we were. and to add to that, people in brussels spoke french which i didn't really know in advance. overall, we could have been a lot more prepared for this trip, and we definitely weren't. since we were delayed in getting into brussels, couldn't figure out how to get to the area our hostel was in, and then couldn't find our hostel for awhile since the address said it was on a perpendicular street, we only had a couple hours of daylight to spend in brussels.

our hostel was in a very modern area of brussels, which surprised us, until we walked down to the grand palace area about fifteen minutes away only to find quaint, christmas decorated alleys, stores, and old architecture. we encountered the theatre royal de la monnaie on the way to grand place, which is very very very grand. wow. grand place is the central square of brussels and is surrounded by guildhalls, the city's town hall, and the breadhouse (kings house). grand place began as an open-air marketplace set up on a dried-out marsh around the 12th century.

we wanted to head out and see a little more before sunset so we followed tourist signs to the cathedralis ss michaelis et gudalae (cathedral of st. michael and st. gudula). this cathedral is a roman catholic church on the treurenberg hill in brussels and was founded in 1047. it was renovated in the gothic style during the 13th century and the facade was completed in the 15 century.

view of grand place from st. michaels

we also saw the remains of the floor plan that had been excavated underneath the church.

after that, we found another tourist sign that pointed to the royal palace of brussels, which is the official palace of the ging of the belgians. however, it is not used as a royal residence, since the king and his family live in the royal castle of laeken on the outskirts of brussels. it is also situated in front of brussels park, which we walked through, but everything was dead and creepy so we didn't spend much time there. 

we also encountered wim delvoye's sculpture: tour 'bruxelles.' delvoye is a belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and shocking projects. this piece was extremely detailed and amazing. taken from the plaque in front of the tower: "within the framework of the exhibition, "knockin' on heaven's door," wim delvoye conceived a gothic tower, made of corten steel, reaching towards the sky from the roof of the centre for fine arts. it concerns an expanded version of the tower that delvoye exhibited at the guggenheim museum during the venice biennale and at the musee rodin in paris.  

we were freezing and hungry so we grabbed some belgium waffles on the way back to grand place. we had to walk through it to get back to our hostel and came across the best christmas light show of all. animations of projections on town hall incorporated the architecture and made it appear that you were seeing what was happening inside the building. coolest thing ever. and made our couple hours in brussels completely worth it. you'll see what im talking about in the video i create (one of these days) :)

 

we decided we needed some real food and picked a restaurant between grand place and our hostel. i cant remember what its called right now, but it was multi leveled and had a huge menu. ryan and i shared the appetizer of fried jalapeno and cheese ball things (with cheddar and cream cheese!), i'm going to have to make these one day. after pizza and beer for dinner, we decided to try out this irish pub - we were looking to watch some sports since we were so sick of walking around and it was still early. the one we went to wasn't playing anything but soccer, and was extremely smokey, so we called it a night! we left early the next morning to go back to rome. even though we only got a day in each city, i can't believe how much we accomplished and i can't wait to revisit all of them. my thanksgiving break was now over and i was back to the daily grind before heading out to greece the following weekend.