Both myself and Gina are from Ireland. We'd planned this trip months ago, a quick dash for a long weekend off to Brussels and on to Brugge. Hardly off the beaten track, but a track nevertheless. I'm a nervous traveller on aircraft, so was delighted to arrive in Brussels main airport unscathed after a wonderfully calm (and may i say cheap) flight from Dublin. We were very surprised to find the train to the city centre so easily, and even more surprised to find that it was a mere 5.60 euro for 2 people. Of course, i spent the next 10 [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sunday morning I woke up really early. Everyone else in my room was still asleep but given some of the girls had commented about lack of hot water the morning before I decided I would get up early and shower. After checking my email (which was quite difficult given the keyboard is completely different and even logging into my email was a challenge) I headed off to see some more of Brussels - this time while it wasn't raining. So I headed to Palais de Justice which was quite a hike. By the time it hit 9am I was able to [View Full Entry]

---

---

First - if you are getting this email for the first time it's because I made the decision to subscribe you - feel free to unsubscribe yourself though! I am slowly adding people I think might be interested but I will not be offended if you simply unsubscribe... So anyway, Friday evening straight after work I headed to Victoria Coach station to catch the bus to Brussels. I had to check in about 45 minutes before the bus left and we started boarding about 15 minutes before the bus left. I was going with National Express/Eurolines and the bus on the [View Full Entry]

---

---

this last weekend my friend sina was gracious enough to invite me to belgium to stay with his family and visit the area the following is my recollection so friday i had the day off school which was nice cause it was sunny and lovely here in angers so i decided to rent a bicycle for the day from the town cause its like 8$ can. and super cute to ride around town with your basket filled of wine and baguettes and croissants...u know i do it. anyways i took the bike along the trails on the river cause this is [View Full Entry]

---

---

sorry guys laundry is finished...as is my diet as i just had yet another kebab dinner. i loves me some curried meats. such class... anyways after the awe inspiring trip to the peeing statues we decided it was time for some traditional fair. or at least sina's stomach told us so. we go to a restraunt along the perimeter of the floral carpet and decide it best to sit inside away from the noise pollution that was saturday afternoon in brussels. of course we ate some belgian waffles and beer for dinner. what else would we eat? these waffles were insane [View Full Entry]

---

---

As they say here in Brussels, Bonjour! Yes, apparently they speak French (and Flemish) here in Belgium...I did not know that until we got here! This is the first city I've every been in where French is one of the main languages spoken, and I've learned more French in the last two days than I ever managed to learn German. And by that, I mean I can now say 2 things: merci, and au revoir. Hey, thats more German than I ever really managed to pick up! We are now in Brussels (and by 'we' I mean Bethany, Stephen and myself) [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hola como ya lo había pronosticado estuve en Bruselas, Bélgica un país muy hermoso y bien internacional mas que Suecia diría yo, en este país encuentras emigrantes de casi todos los países del mundo, la gente es muy cordial y se hablan casi todos los idiomas. Bélgica esta dividido en 2 regiones la parte donde las personas hablan Dutch (holandés) y la parte francesa. En Bruselas las personas por lo general hablan frances pero a la hora de hablar ingles cualquier persona te puede sostener una conversación no hay problema, otra cosa que me impacto es que casi el 80 % [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well we finally made our fist trip across the ditch to Europe. Yes a weekend in Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp and we are impressed. Our trip started on Friday morning 7am at St Pancras Station, where we boarded the Eurostar. It was a sharp contrast to airports, we arrive 30 minutes before departure not 3 hours, check in is relatively easy and with in 20 minutes you are sitting in the train ready to leave. The only hiccup was secrurity, who took my swiss army knife because it was considered dangerous in the present London climate (there is a knifing every [View Full Entry]

---

---

Yesterday (30.7.) I got up to another hot, sunny morning (surprisingly no sore muscles despite the immense physical effort!), packed up my bags and loaded them onto my bicycle and headed for the train station. There I encountered my first problem of the day, when I couldn't print out my Eurostar ticket for some reason. Luckily I was allowed to board the train with just my email print-out of my reservation. My bike was loaded into the back of the train into a wee compartment to which only the conductor had the key. I thoroughly enjoyed the train ride (wow, someone/something [View Full Entry]

---

---

While traveling around the world we choose our destinations to give us great memories of this epic journey. Most times we will pick winning locations, other times we pick some less than desirable locations. Brussels falls into the latter category for us. We board the train in Paris and head towards Brussels. The train ride is quite nice and we take full advantage of our Eurail Pass and sit in the first class section. After a relatively short train ride, we arrive in Brussels. Our arrival date is the 18th of July. Stepping off the train, we give ourselves a few [View Full Entry]

---

---