My arrival in Brussels

---

We arrived to Brussels around 6:15pm on Friday night and Nadja from ISB came to the train station to pick us up and take us to my new apartment.
We were able to look around the apartment, meet Amanda, one of my flatmates and her mother, I chose my room, and then we took a cab to our hotel, where I stayed with my mom and grandma for a few nights. Our hotel was literally right infront of the Grand Place, so we had an array of shops and restaurants to choose from for dinner. We ended up eating in a little diner beside our hotel because we were all really tired from the trip and the move into my apartment.
The next day the three of us went to the Grand Place for our morning coffee and then we went chocolate shopping! I think my mom and grandma each brought home a couple of pounds of Belgian chocolate! After all of our shopping we went out for lunch and had Moules Frites, which is mussels and fries- a traditional meal in Belgium...and luckily for us, mussels were in season! We just walked around for a bit in the afternoon and explored some of the smaller shops and an outdoor market around the Grand Place. We also went and saw the Manneken Pis, which is a famous statue in Brussels - an interesting note is that this little statue has several hundred costumes!
On Sunday my mom and I went to the The Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium and saw the modern and ancient art exhibits. We spent the majority of the day there and then we picked up a few groceries and other items that I needed for my apartment. After dinner (another meal of Moules Frites) we went to my apartment, I unpacked and my mom and grandma stayed there for a few hours with me. Then it was time to say goodbye - I spent my first night in my apartment and my mom and grandma had to go back to the hotel because they had an early train to Amsterdam the next morning, where they would then be flying back to Toronto.
It was sad to say goodbye to them, but I had a wonderful trip and I knew that these few months in Belgium would go by really quickly and I would be back for Christmas vacation before I knew it!

---