Je Ne Pas Parle Francais

From the (possibly misspelled) title of the blog, you get a little hint of what it was like on my first visit to a non-english-speaking country. Although I've been to the Dominican Republic and Mexico, the only places I went were tourist destinations where everyone speaks english. So waltzing into the Brussels, Belgium airport at around 9am on Friday, and seeing that english was not only NOT the first language (and only) language on signs, but it was often the 3rd or 4th language... that was a new (and exciting!) experience.

We arrived in Brussels, and had our first rendezvous (french!) with the language barrier when trying to figure out which bus to take to our hostel. Luckily after about an hour of wandering around, we finally located the bus. Getting to our hostel was also a little bit of an adventure, but between Allie's memory of the

directions she'd forgotten in Dublin, and my map-reading skills, we eventually got there. When we arrived at the hostel we were given the KEY to our magical/exciting/frugal/fun-filled/touristy weekend in Brussels- this great map made by a company called Use-It. I'd strongly suggest that anyone traveling try to find a Use-It map for their destination, because seriously, the map was awesome. It 

was written for young people, had lots of tips about cheap attractions, and lots of funny comments about trying to blend in with the "Brusseliers" too. After dumping our stuff in the cute little room, we headed, map-in-hand, towards the city center to see the sights. 

We saw Mannekin Pis, which is one of the most famous sights in Brussels-basically it's a statue of a little boy peeing (it's a fountain), and it used to provide water for the people of Brussels. Now it's just a tourist attraction. Also, for all the tourists Mannekin Pis attracts, and all the souvenir statues commemorating that little boy peeing, the statue itself is pretty underwhelming, so underwhelming that it's actually really funny. After following signs and signs pointing us towards the statue, we 

all finally got there, took one look at it, and laughed. It was still something really cool to see, though. We also had our first Belgian waffles (SO GOOOOOOD), and saw The Grand Place, which basically looks like a plaza out of old-world Germany, or a movie set. The Grand Plaza is a large cobblestone "quad", surrounded by huge gothic-looking buildings. Afterwards we wanted to find Mannekin's sister, Janneke Pis, and so we wove our way through narrow cobblestone streets of restaurants to get to the small alley where Janneke was. And let me tell you, there is nothing more ladylike than the position in which Janneke Pis, well, pisses. I think we were all thoroughly entertained by that. After that, we looked in some gift shops, and had a really great dinner. I had an appetizer of escargot (yes, SNAILS. and they were delicious!), a huge pot of mussels, some type of custard/panna cotta for dessert, and a beer. all for €12.50- unheard of in Dublin!!  we followed the map to a great Irish pub (of course we leave Dublin and end up at an Irish pub) for €1 drinks, and sampled some new Belgian beers- Mae's, Blanche de Bruges, and a really delicious fruity beer called Kriek. We were all pretty exhausted by that point, so we called it an early night around 11.

Friday we woke up early-ish to catch a train to Bruge, a city about an hour outside of Brussels that we heard from friends was really cool. Bruge was really cute, and pretty much what you would picture a little Belgian town to look like in your head. Small cottage-esque houses line the streets, and there are beautiful cathedrals towards the city center. Since it's fairly small, and people there mostly speak dutch or flemish, it was a little more difficult to navigate than Brussels, but we climbed up this huge bell tower and had some great views of the town. We also ate amazing French fries (invented in Belgium. NOT france!), that were seriously the best fries I've eaten in my life.

Sunday was spent going to lots of markets in brussels. A flea market, another crafts market, and lots of cute little stores in the city. We also stopped on the street and saw this Spanish play performed by a Colombian acting troupe, which was pretty funny, even though I could only understand every few words they said. We went to the top of a parking garage in the middle of Brussels (a suggestion from this really cool backpacker's map our hostel provided), and had a great panoramic (and free!) view of the city and its outskirts. Thenwe chose to forgo our hostel Sat. night (our flight left at 7am Sunday. And we had to catch a 4am bus to get to the airport), and instead we just went to a pub and danced until it closed, and then hit up late night McDonalds before heading to the bus station. Definitely a long night, but a lot of fun, and we saved the 18 euro from our hostel instead of paying that just to sleep for 3 hours. We took the early flight home, and went to sleep promptly upon arriving home, in Dublin, at 10am.

All in all, it was a great weekend. Definitely an awesome trip, just a little bit off the beaten path.