Strut Through the Barcelona Streets

Deep in the pavements kicking through the streets

To wonder like Picasso in the Barcelona heat.

Passion is the fashion and life is poetry

We welcome to another worlds where every heart can beat.

Goal of the trip, to be like the Cheetah girls when they visited Barcelona. Jokes, but we did watch the music video to Strut and realized that we went to all the places they were in the video. And we might have on occasion been belting it out on the streets. No shame, no shame at all. So, this adventure was taken be me (of course) and my roommate Kaylin!

Day 1
As all our other European adventures, we started our day at 3am to catch our plane. Surprisingly we had no problems getting to Barcelona or to find our hostel. We were some what prepared for trying to find the hostel unlike our carefully planned out trip to Brussels (that's a joke for whoever didn't read about Brussels). We ended up getting to our hostel around noon and couldn't check in until 2. So we left our stuff locked up in a room and thought we would walk to the beach. Before leaving, I did see that there was this incredible marketplace called Boqueria Market. We asked the girl at the reception where it was and perfectly enough it was on the way to the beach. And must I say, the market was AMAZING! It was so vibrant with colors and produce. Any type of food you would want would be there. Since Barcelona is known for having good seafood, we tried out some seafood salad which was amazing. There was also freshly squeezed juice everywhere, so we just had to have them. Plus, in Dublin I really haven't had much fruit. And me turning into my dad, I immediately wanted the coconut one. I have to say, one of the best coconut juices I have ever had. I have had a lot of coconut juice in my day and this one was just so much better. It had the right balance of sugar that it didn't over power the coconut and it didn't taste watered down. It was very pungent with flavor. Oh, I could write for hours about just the coconut juice, but that would probably bore people (besides my dad, but it would just make him jealous!!!). There was also a stand with freshly baked breads that looked amazing. So, we got a baguette to go and made our way to the beach.

Surprisingly the water wasn't too far away. We made it to this walkway thing were people were just sitting around soaking up the sun. I should mention that in the sun, the temperature was 90 degrees Fahrenheit. It felt so nice compared to the cold, rainy Dublin. We were still in our airport clothes, so I was sweating up a storm in this heat in my jeans.

We finally found the beach after walking around the marina for a bit. I looked up after and we were walking around port veil. The beach was just like any other beach, but we were in BARCELONA! We were pretty exhausted for waking up at 3am, so we casually walked around the beach. We put our feet in the water and it was about how warm the water is in New England in the summer. To me, that is warm and really wanted to go in for a swim. But unfortunately I wasn't appropriately dressed. We did take a little break on the beach were Kaylin tried to take a nap. I did the most classic Amanda thing possible and start setting up sunglasses pics. Here is two of the many I took.

We started to make our way back to the hostel because it was past 2 and we could check in. We were staying at the Hipstel in a shared 6 person bedroom. There were 2 beds already taken when we got there, so claimed the other beds. We made ourselves at home and realized how hungry we were, so we headed out to look for something to eat. We thought this would be the night that we were going to do our big fancy dinner. On La Rambla, which is a main tourist street, there was a bunch of restaurants with deals. We went to one were we got 3 tapas each with paella for only 9 euros. This way we got all our Barcelona must eat food out of the way. On our walk down, we noticed everyone had these huge jugs filled with sangria, so just had to have it as well. 

By the time we had dinner and made it back to the hostel it was only 7 o'clock, but man were we tired. We thought we would try to stay up later than that. We looked up stuff to do and found out that there was a fountain that puts on a light show at night. It was only a 2 mile walk away, so what the hay we went. Man was that walk longer than we thought. 2 miles in theory sounds like nothing, but after a full day of walking around with zero sleep, it was difficult. We ran into this interesting building thing and we saw people walking on top of it, so we tried to figure out how to get on top. It turns out on the inside, it is like a mall and there was escalators that went to the top. We walked around the top were you get a good view of the city. I looked up later we were at the Arenas de Barcelona. We got a view of where the Magic Fountain of Montjuic was. Behind it is a building called Palau Nacional (Side Note: cheetah girls filmed part of Strut here). We walked down to were the fountains were doing the show and guess what? They weren't even turned on. Maybe we should have looked up more about it before walking 2 miles. So, we slowly made our 2 mile walk back to the hostel.

Arenas de Barcelona

Palau Nacional

When getting back to our hostel, we got to meet our other 2 roommates. One was from Taiwan and had been there for 5 days already. She was just traveling around. The other was originally from Paris, but is now living in London. They were both traveling alone. See Mom, girls do travel alone and are completely fine.

Day 2

This is the only day that I had things I wanted to do. Our roommate from Paris told us that you can get a 2 day unlimited metro pass for only 14 euros, so we thought that was a great deal. Plus, we wouldn't have to walk as much as we did yesterday and we didn't even go very far. Barcelona is a very large city. We, of course, made our way down to the market again for breakfast/lunch. This time we tried the fruit. I got a cup of mixed fruit and it was so sweet and ripe. It was just what I wanted to eat. We again got our baguette, which I forgot to mention was only 1 euro. We also got ham and cheese croissants for later.  I decided this time I wanted to pair my baguette with cheese. There was a cheese stand and sense everything was in Spanish, I had no idea what I was getting. But, I am not very picky and I love trying new things. Turns out, I bought brie, or at least something that strongly tasted and looked like brie. It was so good though. After my whole small roll of cheese and by baguette, I was thoroughly stuffed and ready to start my day. We got on the metro and made our way toward Parc Guell, which is the tourist park in Barcelona. We might have slightly not know what we were doing. All weekend we looked like the classic lost tourist with me whipping out my map every 2 seconds to figure out where we were. Half the time, we still didn't know where we were. How we didn't get ourselves lost, I have no idea. We were pretty much lost the whole time, but some how managed to stumble upon everything we wanted to see. We weren't too worried because as long as we could find a metro stop we were set.

Parc Guell

Sorry, I am rambling again. Well we followed some street signs and walked up some random hills. Maybe even followed the direction of the tour buses, but eventually we found the park. The thing about Barcelona is about Guadi's influence on the architecture. Me being an architecture minor learned a little bit about him in my history of architecture class. This was the place you really got to see his use of mosaics and the undulations in the seats. This is where you also, supposedly, got the best view of the city. WRONG! Barcelona knows how to milk the money out of their tourist attractions. All the famous tourist attractions were like 20 or more euros to get into. I'm sorry Barcelona, but as a broke collage student, I am not paying that. The main part of this park was only 8 euros to get into, so we thought I guess we can afford that. Boy, was that a mistake. So, not worth it. You can walk around the rest of the park for free and you get just as good as views. Then if you want to see the front part, you could get a picture of it from the street.

Undulated seating

view from parc guell

Famous sculpture

View from street

After wasting our money at Parc Guell, I had heard of a different park that was free that you get a great view from. It was called Parc del Guinardo. Did we know how to get there, absolutely not. We just knew the general direction of where it was, so we just started to walk. Strangely enough, after about 10 minutes we see this giant hill and thought hmmm, maybe this is it. If not, it looks cool enough to walk up. We found the path and started to make our way up. As we got higher up, we saw people on top of this platform thing and started to figure out how to get there. It was "closed off" by a fence, but hey YOBO (your only in barcelona once). Plus, there was people already there so it wasn't that big of a deal. It turns our we found what we were looking for and boy were the views better than Parc Guell. And we didn't have to pay a single cent.

Had to take Classic sunglass pic

From top of Parc del Guinardo

We spent some time up here to enjoy the view and eat our croissants. I also spent some time taking pictures because it was just breath taking. I should also mention, but you could probably guess from my dress that it was extremely warm out. In that outfit, I was still sweating. We after some time started to make our way down. We thought we would be adventurous and go a different way down. Could this end disastrous.... probably? But, it really didn't. We could see everything from where we were, so we said when we get down, just head towards the water. We did and we finally figured out where we were because from the tops of the building we could see Sagrada Familla. This is Guadi's most famous work in Barcelona. Guess how much it costs to get a tour inside. 32 euros! We just admired it from the outside, which was stunning. It was so large. The only problem we found with going at the time of year we did is that all the tourist attractions are under restoration. We saw it at Parc Guell, here at Sagrada Familla, and also at Casa Mila which is where we headed to next.

Sagrada Familla

Casa Mila was the one structure of Guadi's I really remembered from my architectural history class. I remember it being so unique with all the undulations. The front facade was getting work done on it, so I only got to get a picture of the side of it. After all the walking we did, Kaylin wanted to sit down for a bit, so we sat down on a bench right in front of Casa Mila. This guy on the street asked if he could take 5 minutes of our time to do a survey. Seeing how we weren't moving, we thought we would take it. We were probably the worst people to take this survey. He was asking us about the shopping in Barcelona and we had done absolutely no shopping.

Casa Mila

The day before when we were at the Arenas de Barcelona, they had a food court that we thought would be a good thing to eat at, as in it was cheap. I had also looked up the night before after our fountain fail, that the fountains at this time of year only run on Fridays and Saturdays from 7 to 9. Seeing how yesterday was a Thursday, we thought great we have two more opportunities to see the fountains. The Arenas de Barcelona was close to the fountains, so we spent sometime in that area. It seemed to be busier than normal, but we also didn't know what normal was. There was a projector showing a slide show and a stage with someone talking on it. The promising sign was that the fountains were turned on. It was getting close to 7 o'clock, so we started to make our way towards the fountains. We were getting closer and there was security guards blocking the way, saying we needed to go around. Kaylin was thinking ahead and said we should wait until 7 to make sure that the show is actually happening before we walk around. We became more and more curious about the crowd around us. There was people wrapped up in flags and people holding signs. There was news casters interviewing people on the street. Everything was in Spanish, so we had absolutely no idea what was happening. Kaylin was so curious, so asked one of the security guys. It turned out a gathering for the Catalan independence from Spain. Kaylin looked up later, but that Sunday there was going to be an unofficial vote for their independence from Spain. We also asked the security guard if the fountain show would be happening. He gave us a smile, a little chuckle, and a slight shake of his head. Great, 2 times we made our way down to the fountain and still haven't seen this show.

Fountain fail day 2

People at the Catalan Independence gathering

Day 3
Since we had done all the touristy things we really wanted to do the day before this was going to be a day to wonder. We again made our way to the market again for our 1 euro baguette and this time we got some ham to go along with it. Apparently their ham is a specialty or something. It was really cured and dried. It tasted more like salami than ham, but still good none the less. I should mention now that every time we went to the market, we spent less than 5 euros and it filled up until dinner time. Broken collage kids dreams right there! But, we saw this other market place called Mercat d'Hostafrancs during our second fail of the fountain show. We decided to go check it out because Kaylin wanted to get some souvenirs. It was smaller than the other marketplace, but still cute.

Since we had our metro passes, we hoped on the metro and made our way to the Arc de Triomf. I have seen the Arc de Triomphe in France, so I was curious to see what this one looked like. This one had a lot more details to it and had a copper color. We walked down that avenue and through some random park. Then thinking of what else we could do, I thought it would be cool to see the FC Barcelona Arena. So, we hoped back on the metro and made our way over to the western side.

Arc de Triomf

FC Bareclona Arena

We were now really in the middle of no where and there was only 3 stops left on the metro line till we hit the end. Plus, on my map there looked like there was a monument of some sort at each stop, so might as well right! The first one, we took 2 steps out of the metro station looked around, and there really wasn't anything. So, we took our 2 steps back into the metro station and made our way to the next station, which had a park at it. We take our first two steps out of the station and realized, the metro stops were probably about 1000 feet away from each other. You could literally see the other metro stop. We walked through this park and decided we would play around with the various things in the park.

Just goofing off

3 times the charm right! If you can guess, yes we made our way back to the fountain for the last time. This is our last chance to see the fountains. And guess what!!!! We finally got to see it. I have seen the fountains at the Bellagio and these were good in a different way. These one changed the colors of the lights and played it along with current pop music.

Fountains day 3 success

Sense we were on a roll of light up things, we had seen this lit up building and thought we would check it out. It is called Torre Agbar and it literally is what it looks like. It was just a lit up building. We took 2 steps out of the metro, 2 steps into the metro.

That night we decided we would go out. And if you want to hear that story, you will have to ask me in person! Cliff hanger, I know! Really not that interesting, but this post is getting really long.

Day 4
This was supposed to be our beach day, but we wake up and its not very sunny. It also isn't very warm and it starts to drizzle. But, we were hopeful and worn our bathing suits, so I also didn't bring my camera with me. Of course, we make our way towards our favorite market place. To our very disappointment, it was closed! We walked toward the Gothic quarter and some street that Kaylin wanted to see. Then we made our way to some museums that we knew that was free on Sunday. We ended up walking through another cute little marketplace. At 3pm, the Picasso museum is free, so we thought that would be a good thing to do, but the line was unreal. So the rest of the day, we pretty much did souvenir shopping.

The next day was our day to go home. The thing I didn't realize was I had a quiz that Monday at 1. Parents, you are going to hate me, my plane landed at 12:10. I ran off the plane, went through border control, and hoped into the taxi. I told the taxi driver to book it because I had a quiz to take at 1. I made it to campus at exactly 1 and ran to the classroom. I sat down and took my quiz, so don't worry parents. I am still going to school :)

And I Lost My Heart to A Galway Girl

And I ask you friends, what's a fella to do?

Because her hair was black and her eyes were blue

So I took her hand, and I gave her a twirl

And I lost my heart to a Galway Girl.

It is kind of a joke of our apartment that our apartment song is Galway Girl by Steve Earle. Most people will recognize it because it is in the movie PS I Love You. And this last Sunday, I finally planned a trip to the Western side of Ireland to visit Galway. Kaylin, my roommate, had her grandfather here for the weekend and she was planning on going to Galway with him. I thought it would be the perfect time to go since I wasn't doing anything, so I tagged along. Our other roommate, Ashley, came along as well. We decided to do a bus tour through Paddy Wagon because we had done bus tours with them before and they are normally very good. 

Sunday morning, we get a bright and early start of 7am. The buses don't run that early, so we had to take a taxi in to get us to the meeting point in the city. The awkward part was they had overbooked the tour, so Ashley and I got separated from Kaylin and her grandfather. They joined a 4 day tour, but they were all stopping at the same points we were at the same time, so it was ok in the end.

It was about an hour drive until we hit our first stop, which was Cong. There was some movie that I had never heard of filmed here. There also a cute abbey with a wilderness walk that we didn't have enough time to walk. Then we next moved on to driving through Connemara which was so picturesque. Pictures couldn't capture its beauty. The best part was we really got to experience western Ireland weather. This consists go constant rain showers. They would roll in and pour for about 10 minutes and then move on and clear up. But, here are some pictures of our drive through Connemara.

We finally made it to Galway Bay and boy was it windy. From here, you are able to see in the distance the Cliffs of Mohr, which was completely in clouds. 

 Then we reached our final destination, Galway. It had started to rain a bit, but it didn't stop us from walking around. It was a very similar city to Ireland, but it was a bit smaller. One thing to see was the Spanish arches, which were kind of just like any other arch. Nothing too special. We managed to walk through a market place. It was about to close, but we were still able to get some shopping done. And seeing how we really hadn't eaten all day, we were starving. We went to a pub to get some good old Irish comfort pub grub. I had some delicious Irish lamb stew. Then it was back on the bus to make our way back to Dublin. I managed to be awake for about 30 minutes of the 2 hour ride!

Hell-a-ween

Happy Halloween everybody!

So, there is this little thing called the GNIB (Garda National Immigration Bureau). Ireland doesn't make you get a visa when studying abroad for a semester. But conveniently if you are staying in Ireland longer than 90 days or 3 months, you have to go get a GNIB card. Oh and did I forget, pay 300 euros. Seeing how when studying abroad we are only in Ireland for 3 1/2 months, it is kind of annoying having to have to pay 300 euros. Oh and the horror stories you hear about the GNIB. First off people will get there at 6am when it doesn't even open until 8am and not even get a ticket and ask to come back a different day. Then if you don't bring the right documents, oh you are in for a yelling for. Not only might you have waited in line for 6 hours, but then get a yelling at by the GNIB people and them sending you home having to come back another day. I heard about a girl who went with all the right documents, but the credit card account she was using was under her dad's name. They didn't believe that it was her dad and asked for proof that he was. They even went to the point of asking if he could fly over here to prove it. Ridiculous right? My roommate got yelled at because her immigration stamp was expired by 2 weeks and the GNIB person said that they could call the garda (police) to arrest her because she has been illegally in their country for 2 weeks. He had brought her to tears. Most people don't get their GNIB card the first time. It normally takes them 2 or 3 times.

To say the least, I was not looking forward to going through this whole process. My stamp luckily expired November 1st, and being me I waited until the last minute to do this. So that's right, I went on the morning of Halloween! Happy Halloween to me! YAY! So, not wanting to get yelled at for being an illegal immigrant, this was my one shot. I checked and double checked with everyone that I had all the right documents. Then making sure I got a ticket, I decided I would wake up at 4:30. I got my lazy ass out of bed, dressed, and feed. I grumpily walked towards the bus stop to hail a cab, seeing how buses don't start running until 6. The cab driver told me off saying that it was too early to go to the GNIB. He said it is best to go in around 11 and not have to wait in line. I told him I wanted to make sure that I got a ticket that day.

12 euros later, I was waiting in line with a shit ton of other international people. The line was already wrapped around 2 sides of the building when I got there. People start lining up at 3am in the morning. I immediately plopped my butt down on the cold sidewalk. A Pride and Prejudice movie later, and the line finally starts moving as the GNIB finally opened. It took about an hour of slow walking to finally get into the building. Guess what number I got? Just guess! You got it! Ya, I was number 150! When I sat down they were on number 4. Hmmm....  let's calculate how long I will be waiting for. Try this for some math: 30 minutes of Lion King + 3% of Gone Girl + the whole A Walk to Remember + 20 Flow Puzzles completed + 5% more of Gone Girl + 10 more Flow Puzzles + maybe about 10 songs=....? You think you got it. If the answer was 4 hours, then you were correct. After about waiting around for 4 hours, I finally got to talk to someone. I go up to the desk and hand over all my papers. The guy behind the glass window doesn't say a single thing to me. I nervously sit there while he types some things into a computer. Then we get some interaction. It goes like this:
Guy: how long I am here for?
Me:until December 20th.
(a couple minutes of typing and me hoping nothing is wrong)
Guy: Where are you living?
Me: (oh shit, what is my address) it isn't on one of those papers?.... Um, I live on UCD campus. Glenomena house 3, apartment 6, room 1.
Guy: What is a number I can contact you at?
Me: Um, I don't have one
Guy: so there is no way to contact you?
Me: uh, no... is that a problem? (starting to think I'm not going to get my GNIB card)
Guy: so you are only here a semester?
(Guy, keeps flipping through my passport and papers)
Me: yes!
Guy: so you are only here for another month or so?
Me: yes
Guy: so it is really pointless for you to pay 300 eurors
Me: ya, but that is the rules of the country
(guy keeps looking around)
Guy: so, I am going to re-punch you into the country, so you don't have to pay the 300 euros
Me: OMG, thank you so much (so much happiness rushed over me)

I was so happy for not having to waste 300 euros for being in the country for an extra 2 weeks and having such a nice guy at my window. So for whoever you were, you just made my month pretty much! So, after that whole process I go back to my apartment to try to take a nice nap so I can celebrate Halloween in the proper manner. So, for your enjoyment, here are my halloween costumes!

                                                                         

The Mussels goes to Brussels

Oh Brussels, where do I even begin. First off, this trip comes 4 days after my Amsterdam trip and man can I say traveling is tiring. But, it is totally worth it. I booked this trip with my roommate Kaylin and our friend Aliya. And, if you are lazy and don't like reading my long blog posts because I tend to ramble a bit, I can sum up my trip in three words. FOOD, FOOD, FOOD! Anyone who knows me, knows my obsession with food wouldn't be too surprised by this. When booking this trip, we knew we weren't going there to see the beautiful sites, granted we know we would probably end up seeing them. We thought go to Belgium, hell yes, let's eat tons of waffles and chocolate! Little did we know about their fries, mussels, and beer. 

Day 1

Oh boy, oh boy was day 1 a mess. First off, we met a girl traveling alone in the line to board the airplane and we told her she was more than welcome to tag along with us granted we had no idea what we were going to do when we got there. Her name was Stella and she was from northern California. She was studying abroad in Galway. When we landed, we had absolutely no idea how to get to the hostel. The 3 of us are kind of a plan as we go kind of group, so no one really thought ahead of how to get to the hostel from the airport. We followed the crowd to this extremely long line for the bus, but we overheard some British guys conversation saying it cost the same amount to take a taxi to Brussels. So, we ended up taking a taxi to Brussels-Midi station. Our thought, "at least we are in Brussels now." But, where in Brussels are we, no idea. Probably in the middle, right? Wrong, we were pretty far south in the city. And where is our hostel? In the most northern part. About a 5 minute walk from Brussels-Nord. Sorry, I'm rambling again! We tried to ask the police people where to find Le Grand Place because we knew that was kind of in the general vicinity of our hostel. Well, guess what? None of them could speak English very well. But, eventually we found some random person to direct us in the general direction. So, the walk begins.... and the walk continues... and where the heck are we walking to? but we continue. About an hour of walking, we finally found a street map. This is when we finally found out where we were. Up until that point, not a clue. I'll cut this part short and say that it took us about 3 hours to walk to our hostel. It wasn't a waste of a walk though. We did stop for waffles and fries! And OMG were they heavenly!

We checked into our hostel and literally all of us hit the bed. We were staying in the Van Gough Hostel. We got a 4 bedroom private room cause it was only 1 euro more than the 8 bedroom rooms. We quickly realized how hungry we were though because all the walking we did. So, we walked around aimlessly again, looking for somewhere to eat. We ended up deciding on a chinese restuarant that was just ok. But, we decided we would explore more of the city. We, mapless and clueless, started just wondering around. The phrase comes to mind: Not all who wonder are lost! I think that is what the moto of this trip was. On our walk we spotted these delicious looking waffles, so I just had to have one. 

And then the walking continues again. We saw this beautiful looking tower thing that you could see over all the building and thought we should go check that out. We walked over, and guess what we stumbled upon. It was Le Grand Place, the place we were originally looking for directions to. We were just talking and this girl started talking to us. Her name was Sarah and she was from Canada, but studying in Liverpool. She was telling all about the things to do around the place and showed us the good places to eat. She was really nice, so we made plans to meet up with her the next day for dinner. There were large groups of people sitting around in Le Grand Place, so we decided to sit there and hang out. We quickly learned that there are no open container laws in Belgium. Everyone was sitting around casually drinking their beers on the ground. We quickly took note of that. 

Day 2

Thank god, when we checked in the guy at the front desk gave us a map of the city. It was labeled with all the different attrations, pubs, and places to go out. It had descriptions of all these places as well,  so it gave us an idea of what we should do with our time. Me, wanting to make sure I get to do all the touristy things in the city I'm visiting planned out our walking route. The only downside is that it started to rain as we started out walk. So, we kind of scratched our original plan. We did get to see some cathedrals. We walking into St. Jean-Baptiste Church which was a refugee church. They had posters set up with information about the slavery and immigration problems of Brussels. Close by was the St-Kateligne Cathedral. 

St-Katelijne

At this point it turned from a drizzle to a down pour rain. We decided it was best to make our way to Le Grand Place. Here we stopped at a fry place where we were told by other international students about their sandwiches. The sandwich was as long as my forearm, maybe longer, and was filled with fried chicken and french fries. Then it was doused in sauce. They had 47 different sauces to choose from. We went with the samurai sauce. The one thing you need to know about their fries is that it is double fried. That is right. It is fried twice. They were so crispy and hot. It was so large, I couldn't even finish it. I was stuffed beyond belief. It was still raining so we were just standing under an awning eating the sandwiches and the faces of people walking by were priceless. They were either utterly disgusted or wicked impressed. 

Mitraillette

The rain started lightening up, so we continued to walk. I wanted to see Le Grand Place again. Turns out, people can get married here. Jealous, right? It's such a beautiful place. I snapped a picture of this beautiful couple standing on the balcony. It was funny how everyone was gathering around to talk pictures of them. We think people thought they were royalty or something. Hey, they could be. We have no idea. 

Couple that just got married at Le Grand Place

The rain started to pick up again. We figured we were already wet, so we kept on trucking. I read in on my map thing that street art is a big thing in Brussels, so we had a bit of fun playing around with the street art. 

We walked down and saw a bunch of people crowded around and decided might as well see what they are looking at. We had found Manneken Pis, who is the national symbol for the country. When we arrived at the spot, some guy was dressing him in this outfit. The national symbol got to protect himself from the rain as well. 

Manneken Pis

Our end destination was the Flea Market, we made it there, but it wasn't very interesting. It could have been cause it had been raining all day, but regardless we didn't spend much time there. Kaylin needed to buy a purse because she had gotten hers stolen earlier that week (funny, but not so funny story that is too complicated to tell in this blog post). So, her and Ailya went to the shopping area, but I still wanted to see more of the cities. I walked over towards the Justice Building, which was huge. I don't have a picture because it was pouring rain and I was trying to protect my camera. But, I don't think I could even fit the whole thing into one picture. I made my way towards the Parc de Bruxelles. Walked throught it, which would have been beautiful to walk through when it wasn't down pouring rain, but hey you can't control mother nature. It slowly started to clear up as I made my way back towards Le Grand Place, so I decided I wanted to go to Parking Lot 58. This was originally on the plan, but when it started down pouring rain, I didn't want to stand on top of a parking lot in the rain. This parking lot is where you get to see the best 360 view of the city.

View from Parking lot

View from one side of Parking Lot 58

After, this I was done. My feet were starting to hurt from walking around all day with wet shoes. I was also a little tired of being wet. I was supposed to meet Kaylin and Aliya at the hostel at 5 anyways and it was getting close to that time. Back at the hostel, I mapped out everywhere I walked and I pretty much walked around the entire city. I was pleased that I got to see the majority of what I wanted to see. The only thing I didn't get to see which I really wanted to was the Atomium. It was like Brussels Eiffel Tower. It was a tall structure of nine metal balls. That was the first thing we looked for on own walk, but we could find it. We were in the exact place it was placed on the map and we saw nothing. Which was weird because this structure is huge. We were joking that it doesn't actually exist, but I saw it when I was on top of Parking Lot 58. I even went on a 30 minute search of it, but no luck.

That night we were meeting up with our new Canadian friend Sarah. We meet her in Le Grand Place. Sarah told us about this street with a bunch of cheap restaurants on it. I later looked it up and it is called Rue des Bouchers and apparently only tourist eat here. It was a narrow street with only restaurants and all the people outside try to lure into their place. It was a pretty interesting experience. We did get lured into a place, where we got 3 courses and a free drink for 12 euros. For what we paid it was a really good meal. Apparently Mussels is must thing to have in Brussels, so of course for dinner I got the mussels and of course they came with a side of fries. They were surprisingly good mussels for the price we were paying for them.

Mussels in Brussels

After, we decided we would go out. Sarah knew of a pub with cheap drinks, so that was our first stop. It was like a sports bar and a soccer game was on. We just chilled out there for a little. Then a singer started to play live music and it was just ok. Not nearly as good as the live music in Ireland. Slowly missing good old Ireland, we next went to a pub called O'Reilly's which was an Irish pub. Funny enough, we meet a bunch of Irish guys from Northern Ireland. They all worked for an electrical company, that flies them around Europe to work with shops like Penny's. It was great craic and it made us realize how much we loved being in Ireland. We were only gone for 3 days and we missed it. 

Day 3

Since Brussels isn't that big of a city, we decided we would visit other city in Belgium since we were already there. Kaylin had heard of a place called Brugge. It was supposedly supposed to look like a fairy tale, so we thought we would go check it out. It was a little bit over an hour train ride. But, it was a beautiful ride because we got to see the countryside of Belgium. Once we got there, we had no plan. We just started to walk toward a tower looking thing. It is true what they say about Brugge. There really wasn't much to do there, but it felt like you were in a fairy tale. There was even horse drawn carriages that could take you around. 

Brugge, capital of Belgium

But to make this quick, I can tell you all we did was enter every chocolate shop we found and just stared at the chocolate. And let me tell you, every two shops there would be a chocolate shop. It all smelled and looked delicious, I couldn't resist and I bought myself a small/not so small chocolate box. We also went into the liquor stores to look at all their different types of beers. They had different flavored beer in pretty much anything you could think of: peach, strawberry, blueberry, chocolate, speculoos, and even coconut. I just had to try to coconut beer because I couldn't see it being any good. But, surprisingly it was very good. It didn't really taste like beer, but it definitely had a coconut taste to it. And with there being no open container laws, we causally walked around drinking our beer. It was a very strange experience because I still felt like I was doing something wrong. Then for dinner, we had to have one last waffle and some fries. So we had a pre-dinner waffle and then dinner consisted of a lot of fries.

Like I said at the beginning, this trip was all about FOOD, FOOD, FOOD! I probably gained 10 pounds in that one weekend and raised my cholesterol a few points. But, hey when it Brussels right! Our second moto of the weekend was YOBO! You're only in Brussels Once!

Side Note: My ethnicity
So, I came up twice when I was in Brussels, so I thought it would be appropriate to put it in this blog post! The minute I open my mouth in Ireland, most people's immediate response is oh your American? And none of my other American friends get that. I think here people assume that I am from Asia and are shocked when they hear my English. So, in Brussels when we trying to figure out how to get to our hostel at one point we tried to buy a bus ticket. Here is how the conversation went:

Me: Hey, I would like to know what bus would get me to this hostel?
Guy:.....
Me: close to this area? (pointing to a map)
Guy: where are you from?
Me: I'm from the US
Guy: (points to Aliya and Kaylin behind me) they are from the US. You are not.
Me: Um, I am pretty sure I am from the states.
Guy: there is no bus that gets there
Me: Ok (walk away)

So apparently, I am no longer from the United States. It was just a bit odd to me. I am used to getting stuff like this all the time, but I have never had someone tell me I was not from the US. The second incident was when we were going through border control coming back into Ireland. I got through and I was waiting for Kaylin, who was right behind me, to get through. This Asian women walks is walked over by the security guy to wait behind Kaylin. She immediately starts talk, what I presume to be, Mandarin. I ignored her, assuming she was talking to someone. She keeps gagging away and I look at her and she is waving at me saying who knows what? I look behind me and there is no one there. I look at her and she is still talking. I just look at her and say, "Only English, sorry." She literally just gave me the death stare. I felt so uncomfortable, I moved so I couldn't see her anymore as I waited for my friends. At that situation, I just wish that I could help her. She probably saw that I got through and that I could help her. Just makes me wish that I knew some Mandarin.

Just thought I would add that in! There have been other funny stories talking about my ethnicity around Dublin, but I will get into that a different time!