Wednesday, April 17
When we got to Brussels, we walked from the train station to
our hotel, which was a Hilton Garden Inn. Certainly not fancy, but unlike the
hotel in Amsterdam, certainly adequate and reasonably priced!
Thursday, April 18
We spent the whole day sightseeing and it took very little
time for me to fall in love with Brussels!
We went to the Musical Instruments Museum and it was
fabulous! We are former band nerds and we loved seeing all of the fascinating
instruments – some of which were several hundreds of years old!
We checked out the library and the shops in the city center
area, and as you can see, the buildings are beautiful! While I was prepared for
French to be the dominant language, I was surprised by the lack of English
speakers we encountered (it seemed like the second most prevalent language
spoken is German)! Thankfully my out-of-practice French from many moons ago proved useful
yet again!
I also came across posters advertising a Dachshund parade
that really made my day – it would have been so fun if we'd been in town to see
it take place!
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| we didn't see a single wiener dog in Brussels, but we did see a wiener bus |
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| how adorable! |
Friday, April 19
You may recall that last year when we visited Barcelona, we rented a car and took a day trip to Andorra. We decided to do something similar
on this trip, and rent a car in Brussels to drive to Luxembourg for the day!
We walked to the train station from our hotel and it was
just as simple and straightforward to rent the car as it had been in Barcelona.
Of course this leaves me pondering the same question: why is it such a headache
to rent a car in the U.S.? I just don't understand!
After picking up our car in the garage, we headed out of
Brussels and drove southeast to Luxembourg. It was a beautiful day and the
scenery was lovely in both countries. As we got close to Luxembourg City, the
traffic started to build, which we attributed to spring break travel and it
being Good Friday. We had planned to find somewhere to stop for lunch, but that
didn't happen because it was really kind of crazy trying to drive in the city.
We ended up finding a Starbucks so we could grab something to drink before
deciding to just drive on through and enjoy the day. There was so much
construction going on, countless one-way roads, and very poorly synchronized
traffic lights that all added up to a bit of a headache. Instead of turning
around and doubling back on our path, we decided to drive through to Germany
and return to Brussels taking the scenic route. I'm so glad we did! Even though
we were only in Germany for about an hour, it turned out to be an awesome
afternoon!
Unfortunately we got stuck in holiday/Friday afternoon
traffic when we got to Brussels, but it would have taken much more than traffic to put a damper on such a nice day!
Saturday, April 20
We spent our last day doing some final sightseeing around
the city. We went to the Atomium, which is honestly one of the coolest
structures I've ever seen, as well as other gardens and such. We noticed that
the city center was more crowded today, which, again, could be due to either it
being the weekend, a holiday, or both. Nonetheless, we had a great day roaming
about!
Sunday, April 21, 2019
We got up super early, checked out of the hotel, took the
metro to the main train station, and took the train from the city to the
airport. Even though the public transportation in Brussels is not as extensive
as other cities we've been to, we were able to get around the city very easily!
Our flight home was great; as I mentioned in my Amsterdam
post, I have really become a fan of Delta and today's flight was no different.
The service has been excellent in our experience!
When we landed at JFK, we breezed right through immigration
and customs with Global Entry, and we were on the AirTrain to long term parking
within 20 minutes. We couldn't believe it! I cannot even estimate the countless
hours that having Global Entry has saved us. Forty minutes after landing we
were in the car and driving away from the airport, which was definitely a
record for us, and furthered my ridiculous belief that we would do very well on
any travel portion of The Amazing Race.
For me, Brussels in somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as European cities we've visited go. My top-tier cities are
Barcelona, Paris, Reykjavik, Oslo, and Prague; second-tier cities are London,
Stockholm, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Brussels; and my least favorite
cities so far are Rome, Helsinki, and Amsterdam (I didn't include any
day-trip-only cities because I don't think one day allows for a fully-formed
opinion!). It will be interesting where cities we visit on future trips end up
on my list, because I have been surprised, both positively and negatively, when
places did or did not match the expectations I had leading up to the visits!
Finally, a huge thank you to my mom for watching Ginny and
indulging my numerous FaceTime calls – even though you can see in this last
photo that Ginny herself was over them!
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| clearly she'd had enough of my calls |