‘Tis the Season

It was Christmas time, usually a time for family and friends. As I wasn’t at home, I made did with what was available to me – one friend and some surrogate parents.

In London I met up with Cat (from home and who has been living in the UK) and her friend Jess who was over for a short two month European trip. So anyway, we met up in London at the Pickwick Hall hostel, a private room for three with ensuite which was great.

The first evening we were in London, we went for a walk down Oxford Street and ended up in Hyde Park where a large German Christmas festival was being held. It was full of lights, rides, people and litres upon litres of mulled wine.

Hyde Park Christmas Festival

The days leading up to Christmas were spent sleeping and wandering around London. It was very cool to walk around a city which is so dressed up for Christmas. Everywhere you turned there were decorations and lights, stalls selling Christmas products and store windows arranged for the festive season.

Snowman!

On Christmas Eve I also had the opportunity to catch up with my friend Meri from Finland. She was in Oxford visiting her friend Lou for Christmas and New Years so I headed up to Oxford for the day. We met at the Oxford Castle which was a great idea as there was an amazing outdoor photography exhibition on called Earth From The Air which was showing beautiful airel photography by aclaimed photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It’s an amazing look the earth from above and how it’s changing day by day. For lunch we had a great Greek meal and then went to meet Lou. Soon we were headed back to London in the car and Meri and I parted ways (again) but promised to meet up once more before she headed home.

That evening  Cat, Jess and I went to meet up with the parents of Cat’s boyfriend, Ant (another friend from home) who were to be my surrogate parents for Christmas day. We headed to a bar, had a few drinks, then headed to the only open restaurant which happened to be an Indian place – pretty nice! But soon we had to get back to bed, early night on Christmas Eve!!

The next morning we woke latish and as promised, I cooked the girls pancakes, bacon and eggs for breakfast. Accompanying that was fresh fruit,  juice and champagne, and it was all pretty great. But soon it was time to head out for the main meal of the day, Christmas Dinner. We met Ant’s parents at a hotel which they had booked the meal at. We started with presents, I can’t believe that they had even bought Jess and I presents (albiet edible ones)!

The afternoon was filled with champagne, turkey, deserts, wine, Christmas crackers, balloons flying around the room, and a hugely expensive bill which was fully paid by Ant’s parents, an amazing show of generosity. And then bloated, we headed back to the hostel to watch Love Acutally which is apparantly a popular film for Christmas.

The following days in London were rather relaxed. On Boxing Day I headed out into the shopping hoards and bought a few things. The following day I had a quiet one, but later on met up with Meri once again before both of us had to leave London. We also managed to see the changing of the guard outside Buckingham Palace on the morning before we were set to leave. It was an interesting affair but really not as exciting as everyone makes it out to be!

Changing of the Guard

Part Two

That night we boarded an extremely uncomfortable bus and headed north, destination Edinburgh. After nine and a half hours of half sleep, half candy consumption we arrived faar too early in the morning, and since our rooms weren’t ready at the hostel, we had to hang out in the common room for a few hours.

It was an unexpectedly beautiful day so after  a nap we decided to go for a wander. Edinburgh’s Royal Mile runs for around a mile between the Scottish Parliment and the Edinburgh Castle. So, with this in mind, our first stop was the castle.

Edinburgh Castle

We couldn’t actually go inside as it was incredibly expensive, but we gave it a good walk around. That night, someone decided it would be a good idea to go drinking, so that’s what we did. The hostel was full of long term Australians who only wanted to drink, so we joined them (Cat had also lived there at some stage earlier in the year). Drinking games started and soon everyone moved to what, to me, was a terrible bar – but the others seemed to like it. Backpacker bars just aren’t really my thing.

The following day I spent most of it sleeping. And while Cat and Jess slept even longer, I decided to take a walk up Arther’s Seat, a rather large hill. So after a walk down the Royal Mile towards the Scottish Parliment I began my way up.

Arthurs Seat Silhouette

As I rounded the corner, I found a very cool rock face which would have been excellent for some rock climbing had I had my shoes with me. Just beyond that was another hill which I had decided was worth a climb.

Rocks!

The weather was amazing and this place was amazing, so I kept going. My mission was to make it to the highest hill around and the climb was suprisingly steep. It might have been possible that I took a hard path, but really, that’s all part of the fun. From the top the view was exellent.

View from Arthurs Seat

Soon the sun went down so it was time to head back to the hostel for an easy night, best be resting up for New Years Eve tomorrow!

The day was new years eve and I spent most of it sleeping. I wanted to be ready for the evening. In the afternoon we took a trip to the local supermarket which was more packed with people than any other supermarket I’ve ever seen.  We were mostly there to pick up alcohol so I grabbed some wine, a Hoegaarden and one of the new Kronenburg Blanc beers (absolutely amazing). The evening was started (as it usually does in this hostel) with drinking games which caused me to finish my entire bottle of wine far too fast. But it was fun, and everyone was enjoying themselves and soon it was time to head out.

Each year in Edinburgh the council holds a massive street party with live bands and DJs and around 100,000 people partying it up. So after all this drinking, we headed out into it. Almost at once I lost Cat and Jess but luckily I was hanging out with a Canadian called Zach. And this was about the last I remember. Much to my embarrasment, all the alcohol hit me at once and most of the night is lost in my muddly brain but apparantly I did participate in the count down. This is the first new years that this has ever happened and I blame it on the fact that I wasn’t with my good friends :P

Fortuntely, the next day I awoke and was feeling fine! I had wanted to do the walking tour of Edinburgh that day and Cat and Jess agreed but by the time we got there it was totally full. This was crazy, we didn’t expect there to be so many people willing to go out and tour around the city on New Years Day, so Jess and I enlisted Cat to tour us around the city which she lived in a few months ago.

It appeared that Cat has forgotten most of the city but took us to two of the more interesting places. First was the Edinburgh Graveyard. This place is full of old grave stones covered in skulls and crossbones and skeletons and such.

Gravey!

The second place which I remember was Caton Hill. This is probably the second largest hill in Edinburgh (other than Arthur’s Seat). On the top of it they have a monument which waas supposed to be a replica of the Athenian Acropolis but for some reason they ran out of oney while building it and it never got completed.

Caton Hill

That night, Cat and Jess went on the New Years Day pub crawl. I decided not to beacuse the following day I had to catch a flight back to Luton to get ready for my next adventure, Morocco!

French Finale

My final train ride in France went without error. After leaving Alpe d’Huez at 7:30am, I arrived in Paris at around 1pm.

I was again CouchSurfing, but as it was a Friday my hosts had to work so we had arranged to meet at the Hoche metro station at 6:30. This gave me five and a half hours to kill and after wandering lost around the complex Gare du Lyon for about half an hour, I finally found the luggage check which turned out to be incredibly expensive. Welcome to Paris.

I checked my bags, checked the tourist information centre, then checked my new map. After ripping the map in half by mistake, I grabbed another which showed the routes which the tour busses take. I figured that I’d leave the main sites ’till the next day and so set off to find the French National Library. This, I gathered, is supposed to be a modern architectural centrepiece, and it was very cool. Four seperate buildings in L shapes donned the corners of the structure (in the middle was great public space and a large cluster of treess), the passage between them underground.

French National Library

After the library, I ventured back over the river via a bridge which I guess was specifically added when the library was built. On the otherside, opposite the library, was some kind of sports centre – a crazy geometric building covered in grass, skylights, and bright blue metal framing.

Sports Centre

This also appeared to be a popular youth hangout as it was crawling with teenagers who I thought should have been in school. I passed these kids and began to walk back towards the train station. I was walking along thhe river, under a bridge, when I spotted a very nice homeless set-up complete with tents, tables, chars, appliances (I’m not sure how they got power for them) and even a christmas tree!

Homeless setup

When I got back to the station I still had a lot of time until I had to head west on the metro so I began to walk towards Bastille, a very large and famous round-about.

Bastille

Now I had to make the decision. What to see. I decided on making a brief appearance at Notre Dame but trying not see too much of it. And after walking down a street which I thought was the right one for a while, getting lost, and then getting reorientated, I spotted the small island on which the cathedral was located.

Notre Dame

I then crossed on to the island, but kinda tried not to see too much of Notre Dame itself – I wanted to keep it until I had more time – so just passed by and went on my way. About an hour later I was back at the train station and ready to take the metro to Hoche.

This was crazy, it was rush hour and here I was trying to take the busiest metro in the world with two bags full of junk! I even had to change lines. But it was OK, I made it to Hoche faster than I thought (with enough time to take a little walk around) and soon met my CouchSurfing hosts, Clair and Francis (who was actually from a French owned island off the south-east coast of Madagascar called Reunion). We walked back to their place, had dinner, talked about all sorts of things and had a pretty good evening. Both Clair and Francis were amazingly hospitable and were offering me things left, right, and centre. It turned out that I was the first person that they had hosted!

From this point of my time in Paris, I must be honest, I was a bit lazy! I think I was just tired from all the partying I did in the alps. But I made sure I saw all the big sites. the next morning I got my self out of bed and headed back to Notre Dame to get a proper look. And after all the cathedrals that I had seen in this trip, I have to say I was a little disappointed. This one gets talked up by everyone, but in some ways it dosen’t even compare to many of the others I’ve seen, especially the Italian ones. Here is a picture of it anway:

Notre Dame

From here I headed towards the famous gallery, the Louvre. Again I was lazy, I decided not to go inside. Partly because of time (two days to see the whole thing!) and partly because of money. It’s becoming rather skint and I can’t afford 9 Euros to go to an art gallery, as much as I would have liked to. The buildings and the glass pyramid were especially impressive though! I hadn’t realised that it was so big.

The Louvre

From the Louvre I headed through the massive gardens which extend in front of it. At the other end of them was a small christmas fair with a pretty large ferris wheel. It was here that I caught my first glimpse of the famous Eiffel Tower, and it was then that I though “yeah, I’m really in Paris”.

It was beginning to get dark so I decided to head back. I was supposed to text Clair when I returned to the apartment block so that she could let me in. I was late and my phone had decided to run out of money and not let me top up the credit. So I headed to the apartment and snuck inside with another resident. I got up to level 7 and realised that it was the wrong building! So back down I went and over to the other building. There was no one to let me in so I just skulked around the entrance until a group of people opened it, not thinking twice about who I could be or what I was doing there. I then headed up to the right level 7 and Francis let me in. That night we were going to go out but in the end decided against it as Francis was sick, Clair was getting sick, none of their friends could make it and I was tired.

The following day Clair and Francis had said they would take me out to Versailles so around lunchtime (after a good sleep in) we got in the car and drove out there. The main attraction in Versailles is the palace which has been home to many a French king and queen.

Palace at Versailles

Inside the palace’s grounds and also inside the palace itself were a number of sculptural works from American artist Jeff Koons. The first one which I saw made for a pretty cool photo with the palace refelected in it.

Royal Reflection

The inside of the palace was pretty cool, but to be honest, for the price that you pay it was definitely not as good as the palace in Brussels which was free. There were many dark rooms with large numbers of paintings of past residents, historical beds and furniture, and a terrible audio guide which really didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t read on the signs. The highlight of this palace was the gardens which I hear are very popular and much more beautiful in the summer.

Gardens at Versailles

That evening was another quiet one. Apart from a trip to a street which houses a huge amount of electronics stores to get some things for Clair, we spent most of the night trying to get the French television system to allow us to watch a French film with English subtitles. This  did not end up working, so we began to watch 300 but soon all of us were pretty sleepy and we ended up turning it off and headed off to bed.

The next day was a Monday and Francis and Clair had to go off to work. It was time again for me to see some sights, so mid-morning I set off to make sure I didn’t miss the sights that Paris is known for. My first stop was the Arch de Triomphe, set in the middle of a huge round-about and extremely expensive to visit the inside of. I took a few photos  and then started to make my way towards the Eiffel Tower.

Arch de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower is big. It was even bigger than I thought it was and it was very cool to finally see it in all it’s glory.

Eiffel Tower

I then headed down towards it. The metal framework is amazing and it made for some pretty cool silhouette photos.

Eiffel silhouette

After a little bit of decision making (time was running short), I decided to ascend the tower. The line took about 25 mintues which was a pretty good amount of time considering people queue for hours in the summer. I chose on of the legs which only offers the stairs and just under 400 stairs later I had made it to the first level. Over 200 stair more I was at the second level. The view was pretty cool from here although the day was rather overcast. This low cloud prevented me from spending further money and taking the lift all the way to the top (which was in fact in the clouds).

View from the Eiffel Tower

By the time I got back down it had started to rain so I got on the metro and began to head back to Hoche. That evening was an interesting dinner. I had told Francis that I had neve eated escargot before, so in no time he had whipped up an appertiser and I was eating some sort of pesto roasted snails – not bad at all really but I found it a bit hard to stomach them, something most probably psychological. After this we had hotdogs with salad and “French” dijon mustard which actaully almost killed me. I put way too much on thinking it was like American mustard and it felt like I was drinking vodka infused with chili peppers – I was crying and sniffing annd Francis thought it was funny!

The next morning I was off again. An early train to the airport and a flight for just over an hour saw me land in London. It was Christmas time!

An Italian List

I’m am around three or more places behind now, and I reckon that it’ll take far too long to catch up if I write a 1500 word essay for each one, so I’m swapping back to the list format to deal with all these Italian towns that I’ve visited over the past two weeks.

The morning after I arrived in Rome, I got up earlier than ever to go and meet Sarah at the airport. She’d come over from NZ to visit me and travel around Italy, have some fun and see the sights. We checked out Rome, Venice and Florence with a few trips on the side – so here we go!

Rome

• Rome is a very walkable city. We  just began to wander and ended up in many interesting places. On the first day, this is all we did. Just walked around and tried to organise ourselves for the coming fornight, figuring what we wanted to see and where we wanted to go. This popped out of nowhere though
  

  One Colosseum please!

• On that first day, we also saw glimpses of the Roman Forum and Palatino (which unfortunately we never made it into). Along with many, many, many churches, there was the Arch of Constintine.
  

  Arch of Constintine

• One amusing thing which we saw was the Running of the Nigerians. In all of the cities which we visited (and also in Athens) you can find shady Africans trying to procure you fake Gucci and Prada bags, sungasses and various other things you don’t really want. This is obviously not legal, as you can see them on the constant look out. Popular tourist spots are a haven for these guys, and there must have been no less than 50 or 60 of them at the Colosseum. They stand around, harrassing you as you pass: “Hello, hello, hello, cheap bag, hello, hello, half price, hello”, etc. Then one spots the police, and it’s the oddest situation I’ve ever seen. Sixty men carrying white sheetss and big blue plastic bags full of merchandise are sprinting through the crowds of tourists, swarming for a place to hide. Very crazy to see, I recommend it if you are in Rome.
• We ate way, way, way too much pizza. I don’t think I could handle one for at least a few months now. Pasta is a bit easier to stomach, but I’m almost over Italian food. A proper breakfast would be nice too.
• We did go inside the Colosseum:
  

  Inside the Colosseum

• Outside there were guys dressed up as ancient Romans trying to get you to pose with them for photos all the while trying to stay out of photos from the public. Must be a very stressful job.
• Ruins are all over and everywhere with in the city. Amazing!
• We took a tour through varioous crypts and catacombs of Rome. This was very interesting. The first place we went to, the Capucian Crypt, was 5 or 6 rooms decorated with the bones of thousands of human bodies. There were chandalliers made of bones, patterns all over the walls, hourglasses with wings made of pelvis bones, the full skeleton with a scithe representing death, and horrifying of all was the numberous mummified bodies of monks set around in positions, one who still had a beard on his face. Also in the tour was the Catacombs of Domitella; 11 miles of underground burial passageways which delve 100ft below the surface. Most graves had been removed, but some were still intact.
• We walked the poo gauntlett. A beautiful riverside walk under huge trees, chriping with the sound of birds. Beautiful until we realised there was poo dropping all around us!
• From Rome we took a day trip to the ruins of Pompeii. This was amazing! I was amazed at how large and intact they are. There was hardly anyone there and you could just walk around, getting lost inside houses and temples. This place is so big you need a map to figure out just where you are.
  

  Pompeii

• On the Wednesday we went to the Vatican and happened to see my good old friend, The Pope.
  

  Mr Pope

• While we were there, we also spent a huge amount of time walking around and getting lost in the Vatican Museums which hold an exceptional amount of paintings, sculptures, and other amazing works including my favourite, and entire gallery of ancient maps, some even made out of tapastries. Also part of this is everyone’s favourite Sistine Chapel which holds the ceiling fresco God creates Adam by Michelangelo. To be honest, after walking  around all this art and through numerous decorated churches and chapels, I found this famous work to be rather underwhelming and no way near as large as I had pictured.
• In Rome, the food was really not that great at most of the places we visited. The Italian style pizza is very bland in most regards, and I felt that the lasagnes that I had in The Netherlands and Germany were much better than the ones which I had in Italy. I wanted it cooked in a little pot damnit!
• We also saw such sites as the Spanish Steps which were covered in people, and Trivi Foutain which was pretty impressive. People throw money over their shoulders once to ensure a return to Rome and twice for a wish. Sarah got hit by flying money from above!

Trivi Fountain by night

Venice

• Venice is made up of 400 little islands separated by canals and connected by bridges. It’s located in the north of the Italy. What a maze this place is! At pretty much all times you can’t look straight down a street for more than 100m without it turning a corner. Most of the streets are about 2 meters wide and you just keep going around in circles or off on wild tangents of incorrect direction. If there was a place to get lost, that is what we did in Venice. Just look at a map to see what I mean.
• The canals were everywhere and awesome. It was impressive to see a city which has it’s main transport by water and absolutely no cars. Even the police , fire and ambulance come by water!
  

  Just one canal

• We saw some of the Nigerian bag dealers get chased by under cover police and caught.
• Our very own gondola adventure though the canal was schedualed and on afternoon we were paddled around the city by a man who seemed very disinterested in being a gondola driver. It was cool to see the city from the perspective of the canals, though. It gives a good insight into how the residents actually live.
  

  Gondola ride

• We went on a “ghost walk”-type tour which took us around the back alleys and what are supposed to be the scarier parts of the city where horrible crimes have been committed and ghosts like headless lovers are often seen. It was also a good way to find sights that we hadn’t found earlier, like this cool snail staircase:
  

  Snail House

• On our final day we checked out the 11th International Architecture exhibition which was amazing. Heaps of very interesting ideas were shown by at least 30 countries. One of the coolest displays was the Belgian one, which just consisted of a house with white walls, a few chairs, and confetti EVERYWHERE! It was very cool!
  

  Confetti

• On the day we were leaving, it began to snow and the water began to rise and smell. I hear that they have just had the highest floods in something like 22 years.

Florence

• We visited the Duomo church and it’s baptistry.
  

  Duomo

• We climed the 467 stairs inside the dome of the Duomo church, and came out to an amazing view over the city.
  

  View over Florence

• We spent time each day browsing the endless markets of Italian made clothing and accessories, only to buy nearly nothing.
• We took a day trip to Pisa to check out the leaning tower. It was a beautiful day and the tower was leaning just as much as it should, 4° I’m told.
  

  Leaning tower!

• We visited the Uffizi Gallery which houses Botticelli’s Birth of Venus  and numerous other amazing paintings, all overshadowed by about 5000 images of Christ. We also managed to see Michaelangelo’s statue of David which I thought was the most amazing piece of “important” art which I had seen. Very big and very well made. Truely epic!

And that was a brief summary of Sarah and I’s two weeks in Italy. I’m sorry it began to the more and more brief during the last part, but I am so far behind that I need the time to write the next three posts, let alone getting all the pictures up.

After this, I dropped Sarah off at the airport and headed back to Rome for two nights. Back to CouchSurfing. And then I was off, off to check out Cinque Terre on the recommedation of my good friends Prasna and Frankie.

A Few Days in Brussels

Three days I spent in Brussels. It is both the capital of Belgium, and also the capital of Europe, well, the European Union anyway. The people here speak French rather than Dutch as they do in Bruges so it is a little easier for me to read signs and such, but I still can’t speak to people!

As well as being my first proper city that I have visited on the continent, it is also the first time that I have spend couchsurfing. For those of you who don’t know, couchsurfing is about networking with people all around the world and staying with them instead of staying in a hostel when you are travelling (www.couchsurfing.com). Being my first time I was a little aprehensive, but Alex, the guy who I stayed with, was absolutely awesome. He was extra hospitable, and it turned out that we had a very similar music taste, so we spent a lot of time listening to and talking about music. He also loved the Belgian beers as much as I do!

Unfortunately Alex had to work during the week days so was unable to show me around, but that was ok. I was able to navigate Brussels fairly easily. It is small enough to travel around to most of the interesting sites without having to use public transport, which is good, because that is fairly complex.

In Brussels they have bus, metro and trams. This may sound good, but it is not linked very well. For example, to get from Alex’s place to the central bus station, which is probably about 3km as the crow flies, and on the same side of town as him, we had to take a bus, two trains, and a tram! Ridiculous. Luckily they are all run by the some company so you can buy a day pass and use all of them as many times as you like within the city.

The first night Alex and I just hung out at his place. He cooked a pizza with soggy dough which was pretty funny, him apologising profusely. The next morning I began my wandering. The first site which I stumbled across was the Palace.

Royal Palace in Brussels

From outside, this building is definitely grand, although no more grand than other buildings I have seen. After 10:30 in the morning, you are able to go inside. Now it is very unfortunate that you are not able to take photos inside this building as I’m not sure I can fully explain it in words. The first thing which I noticed was the scale of the interior, it was much much bigger than it appeared from the outside. And the marble, almost the entire interiour was marble. Arches, columns, floors, ceilings, and when there was not marble, there was gold, and plenty of it. Gold adorned everything! The curtains were red velvet, the walls were covered in paintings of former in kings, princes, princesses and queens. Frescos could be seen all over the ceilings, and even one of the ceilings was covered in actaual scarab beetle wings – an amazing thing to see. All I can say more about this building is “wow”. It is more than impressive.

From the palace I moved one to one place that I did know about and had planned to see, the Museum of Musical Instruments. This houses the largest collection of musical instruments in the world. This was very cool, you could walk around displays of hundreds of instruments from all over the world and listen to music from that particular instrument through headphones you were given. The music automatically played when you stood in front of the display. I was particularly hoping that I would find what I now know is called a Hanghang as I thought it was a very old instrument, but it was not there as you can probably deduce from the previous post about Bruges. Of everything in the museum, I think that the pianos were definitely the top display for me. Never have I seen so many shapes and sizes, nor such beautiful decoration. Check this out.

Fancy Piano!

Just wandering around Brussels, a few things I noticed were the large amound of beggars in the streets. Different streets seems to have different types, some for young men, some for women wearing burquas, older men, and those playing the accordian. Well, maybe not the accordian, but as a fan of the accordian I am happy to say that every single busker or busking group which I encountered had some form of accordian player, how fantastic! For some odd reason there are also a lot of hat shops, I have no idea why. Oh, and I found a bunch of record shops that sold so much old stuff you wouldn’t know where to begin. It was excellent.

Old Man Busking with Accordian

Later on in the day on I managed to find someething I didn’t know existed. This was the main square in Brussels, and the more touristific spot in the city. All it was was tourist groups, waffle and chocolate shops, and not much else. Oh, and also some terrifically old buildings, one of which was the town hall. I was unable to get a decent shot of the square as they were setting up for some free summer event and there was scafholding everywhere, but take a look at Flickr for some pictures of some of the buildings found there, the architecture is amazing!

Brussels Town Hall

My last tourist stop for the day was probably Brussels most popular icon, the Maniequine Pis. Luckily I had not known about this little fountain before I came to Brussels, or I would most probably be incredibly disappointed like most of the tourists there. It is the statue that Brussels is most known for, and in a town of amazing sculptures, it stands little over two feet high! People are loving it ‘though.

Stories as to why this exists involve one about two enemies at war, and a little boy runs up and pisses on one of the armies, it is a huge joke the the war is called off. Another tells of a small boy who put out a fire by taking a pee on it. Apparantly there are a huge number more of these stories, none of which anyone believes is true.

Manneken Pis

Not long after I had finished viewing this amazing statue, Alex turned up. We then took a walk through the city towards the outskirts to meet up with one of his friends, Eliza, who was a French language teacher. We sat around at her apartment talking for a while, then headed out to bar for dinner where I had a fantastic lasagne. Yum! And also some more interesting Belgian beer! Out next stop was very interesting. Eliza took both Alex and I, for he had never been there before, to a bar which serves over 300 Belgian beers. The menu was a massive folder with beers separated both by type and alphabetically. At a place like this, the beer really is treated like wine. The waiter approached and the conversation went something like this:

Him: “What kind of beer would you like; blond, brown, ale, trapist, white, dark…?”
Me: “Ummm, I think I’ll try a white.”
Him: “Do you prefer a strong or light beer?”
Me: “I’ll try a strong one please.”
Him: “Fruity or Acidic.”
Me: “Acidic.”
Him: “Then you must try the Blanche Du Hainaut , it is an organic beer made close to here, it ois very good.”

Blanche Du Hainaut Beer

And he can do this for every type of beer he has. He knows them all intimately and can help you choose any type of beer you may desire. Oh how I pine for such an establishment in Auckland. After this, Alex and I headed home to bed as we were both extremely tired.

The following day I began with a walk to an arch. Now this is no regular arch. For a city which everyone knows by a statue of a pissing child and something called the Atomium (I will get to this), this arch is vastly overlooked. Move over Arc de Triumphe, you have to check out the sheer scale of this arch which was built to commerate 50 years of indepence.

Arch Celebrating 50 Years Indepencence

My next plan was to try to check out some contemporary Belgian art, so I firstly headed towards a well known train station and graffiti spot, and this is what I found:

Art From Under a Rail Bridge

Graffiti Inside Train Station

The second picture is actaully the inside of the train station and is a truely amazing sight to behold. My next stop was a small art shop and gallery called A.L.I.C.E. which for some reason stands for Artists Living In Constant Elevation. Very strange. Anyway, this was a shop full of zines and interesting art books and, oh my god, Lomo cameras. If I wasn’t travelling for the next 5 months, I totally would have bought one. How excellent.

That night it rained pretty bad, so Alex and I just hung around in his apartment, listening to music, chatting, and drinking an array of interesting belgian beers, pictures of which you can find in my Flickr galleries.

My last day in Brussels was a Saturday and Alex did not have to work. While I was sleeping, he went to the bakery and bought som croisantes and panne au chocolae which was very nice of him. He then took me to see the Brussel’s famous Atomium, a massive glass and metal sculpture built for the 1958 World Fair. It is based on a Iron atom and the 9 balls represent the 9 parts of Belgium. I decided not to go up because it was pretty expensive, and anyway, there was just a good view at our next stop.

Atomium

After the Atomium, Alex and I headed towards a crazy church I had wanted to see (which I had seen in the distance the day before) but this turned out to be not as exciting as I thought it would. It was also a very commercial church, as you had to pay admission if you wanted to go to certain places in it. I’m not sure that is very right at all. Jesus would not approve. Finally we walked down to the Brussels Court. This was amazing, and too bad it was the weekend because I definately would have wanted to go inside. This building has the 3rd largest floor area of any structure in the world and was apparantly built to show the power of the justice system in Belgium. Absolutly epic building.

Brussels Court

And so that was that. My trip to Brussels had come to an end. Alex and I headed back to his apartment where I packed my things and then headed to the bus station. After thanking Alex and staying good bye, it was onward to Frankfurt!