Brussels!

The second leg of our trip was the lovely Brussels. Our stay in this cozy little city was a bit tumultuous but I'm still glad we went. We were far less planned for Brussels than we were for Oslo and the beginning of the trip was rocky. After another rough Ryanair flight that left Henry and I grabbing our heads in agony and popping as many asprin as possible, we got out of the airport just in time to miss the bus going into the center of the city. Luckily, we found a nice Belgian guy to drive us there in his van. After a cramped car ride (Henry and I both sat in the front. yeah, it was that cramped), we made it to what we thought was the center of Brussels. It turns out though, that the nice Belgian dropped us off at a big bus station right outside the city. On top of not knowing where we were, we also forgot to write down the address of the hostel. After an hour or so of searching for internet/any computer, we found a run down internet cafe and figured out the address. We then realized it was on the other side of the city. And for some reason that I can't remember right now, we decided to walk there.

In the rain. Needless to say, this was an extremely rough start to our stay in Brussels.

The hostel was ok. Not as good as the one we had in Oslo (smaller beds possibly infected with bed bugs/sharing a room with 6 other people), but it was better than nothing. Once we dropped our bags off and settled into our bunk bed, we decided to walk around a little bit and get some food. We ended up getting really lost, but we eventually found a good, cheap restaurant after walking through a bunch of streets where the restaurant owners literally accost you in the middle of the street, begging you to come eat at their place. We then made our way to the Delirium Bar, which, according to them, has world renowned beer as well as hundreds of other kinds. Their beers, Delirium Tremens and Delirium Nocternum, have won the "Best Beer In The World" competition multiple times and are served in giant boot shaped glasses. I think Henry will agree with me when I say that it was really good beer.

the boot of beer

After a slightly crazy night and rough morning, we got out and tried to see as much of Brussels as we could. We were able to hit most of the big monuments and old buildings in the city, although their are tons more on the outskirts of the city. One of the best places we got to visit was the Atomium, which is a giant sculpture/monument built to represent the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal. From the top of it, you can pretty much see the whole city. Even though it was rainy and cloudy, we could still see pretty far into the city from the Atomium.

We were also able to see the peeing boy, who is apparently the mascot of Brussels and is one of their biggest tourist attractions.

Right before it closed, we were able to get into the comic museum and see their huge exhibit on Tintin.

With a pretty long day of sightseeing behind us and a 7 am flight ahead of us, we got a nice dinner at a quirky Chinese food place and called it a night.

By the end of our time in Brussels, I started to like it. The city is full of history and monuments to see and I wish we had more time there to really get to see it like we saw Oslo. But, the next morning, we hoped on the bus to the airport and made our way to Palma Mallorca.

Brussel's Rating:

3 out of 5

Pros:

Lots of History

Great Architecture

Affordable

Metro is easy to use

Cons

With the street names being in French and Dutch, along with the streets just changing names after every block, navigating the city isn't that easy.

Slightly dirty (although our guide book says that they're proud of this)

Not a lot of great museums