Trip to Belgium

So, I am sorry that I haven't updated in a while but life has been busy and I haven't done much new until this past weekend.  On Thursday morning at 9 A.M. my three friends and I caught a bus from Cork up to Dublin for our trip to Belgium.  From Dublin we caught a 3:30 flight to Charleroi on Ryan Air which is the cheapest airline in the entire world.  We flew into Charleroi and then had to endure a 3 hour commute to Leuven (where we have friends living so we had a free place to stay).  On Thursday night we went out to one of the bars where we all hung out and drank some really good Belgium beers which are extremely high in alcohol and not as expensive as they are in Cork.

On Friday we slept in and took a 25 minute train ride to Brussels.  Brussels was a pretty cool city and was a lot bigger than Leuven.  We walked around a ton and saw the "peeing boy" which is the major tourist attraction in the city.  Honestly, it wasn't that exciting as the statue is extremely small and located on the corner of the street.  We also saw Grand Place which is their center square and is absolutely beautiful.  After that we just walked around, ate some food, and headed to Delirium.  Delirium is a bar in Brussels that has the largest beer selection in the world.  There are three floors and each one has a difference group to choose from.  Apparently there are over 2,000 choices.  I had the Delirium Tremens (voted the best beer in the world) and Satan.  It was a great atmosphere and we had a lot of fun.  We headed back to Leuven that night and hung out in one of the bars smoking cigars for the night.

On Saturday we headed to Bruges!  This was the most exciting part of the trip for me as I have wanted to visit this city ever since I saw the movie In Bruges (which is an excellent movie if anybody needs a good movie to watch).  This city is much different from Leuven, which is a student city, and Brussels, which is a lot larger and more modern.  This city is all cobblestone streets and has a very old look to it.  We visited a cathedral which has a vial of Christs blood which apparently turns to liquid every so often (and by that I mean it hasn't happened in 200 years or something) which was cool to look at.  Bruges is a hard place to explain without seeing it so just check my Facebook for the pictures.  We went back Saturday night to Leuven and went out to the bars for a little while.

On Sunday we left Leuven at 3:30 because we had a 9 PM flight out of Charleroi.  I'll skip the details but it turned out that we got into Shannon Airport (about 2 hours from Cork) at 9:50 and there wasn't a bus until the next morning at 8:50 AM.  We got some food and ended up sleeping in the airport.

The best thing about Belgium?  Well, the four things I took away were great waffles, excellent fries, chocolate, and a large selection of beers.  The architecture is also pretty incredible.  Overall, it was an amazing trip.