I petted a black cat in Belgium this week. What did you do?

I spent this past week in Belgium. It's a country known for its waffles, chocolate, and fries. I knew we were in a good country when we were walking through the airport and they had waffles in vending machines. However, during my stay, it was cold. And rainy. And cloudy. And dreary. And a little snowy. Oh, and Christmassy. But mostly just cold and rainy.

My journey started out leaving my piso and having my host mom, Toni, exclaim, "¡qué pronto! :(" She then proceeded to interrogate me as I was trying to walk out of the door: ¿Tienes todo? ¿Tu pasaporte? ¿Toda tu ropa? ¡¡¡TEN CUIDADO, HIJA!!! ¿Vale? Ten cuidado...'ta luegoooo, cariño! 

I met Isis and Genisis outside of their building, and from there we walked to Plaza de Armas to catch the bus that goes to the airport. As we were walking over one of the Bridges of Death (we call the bridges that go over the Guadalquivir River "Bridges of Death" because it's always windy, cold, hot, humid...some kind of somethin' going on. The main Bridge of Death is el puente de Triana). Anyway, as we were walking over the bridge, we said our goodbyes to Sevilla and fantasized about our fun adventures we'd have in Belgium...little did we know it wouldn't be quite as fabulous as we had imagined. 

Getting to the airport, getting through security, and waiting forever all were pretty seamless. After a couple of hours chatting in the airport, complaining about how expensive airports are, and taking a ton of stupid selfies, we finally boarded our flight to Belgium. The flight felt really short, but that's probably because I definitely slept through most of it. 

Getting through the airport in Brussels, catching the bus to the city center, and getting a cab to our hostel were also really easy...except when we arrived to our hostel...the name on our reservation and the actual place at the address were different, so we were confused and slightly nervous. Our cab driver was like "uhh wtf???" which didn't help us feel any better. Then we just went in and asked and it was still the right place, which it was. Just some kind of weird name change game they were playing. It was a little after midnight when we got to our hostel, so we just decided to hit the hay and wake up early the next day to start exploring! 

So, like I said earlier, while we were in Belgium, the weather was rainy and gross about 90% of the time. On the first day, we weren't influenced by it at all. Even though it was rainy and gross, we walked around the city and saw a lot of the famous parts, learned our way around, explored some really neat Christmas markets, found some cute cafes, found an Asian market that was really neat (but smelled kinda like death), and just had a good time. Our dinner was probably my favorite part of the day. We went to an Ethiopian restaurant called "KoKoB." I've always wanted to try Ethiopian food, and it was just as good as I thought...but eating it was quite strange. The food came in little bowls with a giant pancake type thing and little bread pieces rolled up like a fruit roll up which served as our utensils. Our waitress showed us the proper way to eat the food. She spooned food from the bowl onto the pancake, unrolled some bread and ripped off a piece, picked up some food with the bread, and tried to feed it to me. I froze up because suddenly this strange lady was trying to shove food in my mouth which caught me off guard, and when I am caught off-guard I freeze up and make things awkward, so since I just stared at her like she was insane, she ended up feeding it to Isis instead. I should have taken a picture, but we were all so hungry we devoured everything before I even thought about taking a picture. If you're ever in Brussels, I definitely recommend this place! Here's a picture from Google of what it basically looked like:

I got this off of the TripAdvisor website's reviews of KoKoB
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g188644-d778285-Reviews-Kokob-Brussels.html

This was also the day I discovered Speculoos, the best thing I've ever had in my entire life. I didn't take a picture of it, but here's a picture from Google:

Don't know what that is? Think it's peanut butter? You are incorrect. If you have ever had cookie butter from Trader Joe's, this is basically the same thing -- but the original version. It's basically ground up speculoos cookies (kinda like gingerbread) mixed with oil and sugar to make a really unhealthy, yet extremely tasty, spread. It kinda has the consistency of peanut butter, but a little bit more sticky. We definitely consumed waayy too much of this stuff, and honestly, the thought of it now kinda makes me want to throw up.

Oh, and Genisis could literally never remember the name of speculoos. She called it 93203 other names, though: spuffleloos, spuffleluss, specluff, spooklus, scuffle-us... 

Day number two, aka Christmas Eve, was a different story. Even though we had a good first day, we definitely weren't happy with the weather. It was cold, rainy, and windy on the first day. On the second day? Cold, rainy, windy times 29302834. It sucked. The rain wasn't even bearable at some points. We spent a lot of time in cafes and in our hostel because the weather was just that gross. We even nicknamed this one part of Brussels "The Bridge of Death" of Brussels. It wasn't a bridge, but we had to cross this one street into our sketch neighborhood where our hostel was, and the wind was completely insane every day no matter what time of day. I actually had tears running down my cheeks at some points just from the wind. It was ridiculous. Basically, Christmas Eve was pretty uneventful. In the...like two hours...that it was only sprinkling, we managed to look at more Christmas markets. This was also the day that I decided to throw my veganism into the wind to try an authentic Belgian waffle. I wasn't about to go to Belgium and *not* eat an authentic Belgian waffle. I can see that kind of sounds like a dumb thing to make an exception for, but first you have to understand how much I love waffles, and second...when in my life ever again am I going to be in Belgium? Probably never again. Plus, the waffle had melted speculoos on it...it was so worth it.

Day number three, aka Christmas Day, Santa came by Belgium and left us the greatest present of all: the sun!! You read that right my friends, the sun came out on Christmas day. Hallelujah thank da lawd, we could finally see the blue sky. As soon as we saw the blue sky, we all jumped out of bed to get ready as fast as possible to get in some good exploring before it would start raining again. I finally could break out my camera without fear of it getting wet, too! We were all happy campers. We were planning on heading out to find the Manneken Pis statue, which Brussels is famous for, but we decided to go towards this giant fancy building that looked like it wouldn't be too far of a walk. We were feeling pretty ambitious.

If you look reeeaaalllyyy closely, you can see the building we were headed for. 

 We found some cool stuff on the way there, like "the mothership:"

As soon as Genisis saw this, she yelled, "Oh my god!! The mothership!!"

So...turns out the building we were headed for only looked close. I swear, as we kept walking, it kept getting farther away. (I just looked it up on Google maps, and it is 4.5km (2.8 miles) from where we were.) We were kinda hungry, so we stopped at a little convenience store on the way to get coffee, and I picked up paprika chips, which are my new favorite kind of chip. Here's a picture of Isis and Genisis snacking in the park close to the building.

Then we continued on to the building (which ended up being a church). 

So once we got there, we took some pictures in front of it, and then walked around to figure out how to get inside because Granny Bladder Isis had to use the bathroom. 

Well turns out the church was extremely beautiful, and for 5€ you could ride an elevator to the next few levels, with the top level being a panoramic view of the city. So we went up to the top where we had a series of unusual events.

First, we were overwhelmed with just how big Brussels was. Take a look for yourself, it's giant!

Then we made friends with this Asian guy and his mom. His mom was super impressed that Genisis & Isis could speak a little Chinese, and when the guy was taking a group picture for us, his mom wanted in the picture too...so we have a group photo with a really nice Chinese tourist lady on top of a church in Belgium.

After that, as we were taking more pictures, we spotted a (chunk of a) rainbow!

As we were looking at the rainbow, the church tripped Isis and she fell and ripped her new pants at the knee. She was quite sad about that...and she still hadn't found a bathroom. :(

Once we finally found a bathroom, we headed out with the intention of finding a ferris wheel that we spotted from the top of the church. On the way to the ferris wheel, we found this interesting statue:

We definitely got stared at for taking that picture...oh well, #worthit.

After a while, we finally made it to the ferris wheel, which turned out to be the best Christmas Market yet! We spent a while exploring the market, munching on more waffles, and of course riding the ferris wheel.

Don't be fooled by that smile. I am actually afraid of heights and was freaking out. 

Isis and Genisis on the ferris wheel!

View of the Christmas Market from the top of the ferris wheel

I thought this was super Christmassy...a game where you fish for ornaments!

After this Christmas market, went walked to the Grand Place (giant beautiful square) to see the  Christmas lights around the city and to see a light show that was spectacular.

It was a pretty good Christmas, but that night Genisis wasn't feeling too well, so because of that we watched Christmas movies on tv in our hostel and went to sleep kinda early. We were tired from such a long day anyway!

The next day we woke up and Genisis still didn't feel very good. I went down to a pharmacy to pick her up some Ibuprofen while Isis was showering. The first pharmacy I went to was a fail. I tried to open the door and couldn't get it. I pushed, I pulled, I pressed the little doorbell looking thing...nothing. There were clearly people INSIDE, but lawd only knows how they got there. I even tried staring the people down, but I got nothing. Eventually I gave up and walked around the block until I found another pharmacy with a functioning door. The lady inside was super nice and thankfully spoke English, but man that Ibuprofen was expensive. It was almost 10€! It helped Genisis, though.

Since the next day was another day with sun, we made a spur of the moment decision to travel to Bruges for the day. That was quite the experience, but totally worth it.

Basically, none of us knew how to navigate the train station. It was only 5 minutes away from our hostel, but that was the only convenient thing about it. We got in and had no idea where to go, we couldn't read the dang signs, and it was huge! Finally after asking someone at the "Textile Expert" stand, she pointed us to the "Travel Centre." We got in line, bought our ticket (only 11€), asked where to go, and headed to platform #9. Almost as soon as we got there, our train arrived...but we weren't sure if that was our train. So we asked one guy and in broken English he told us it was this train, but it seemed more like he was saying that it was this platform, so we were confused. We asked like 2 other people and after being like 89% sure that this was in fact our train, we hopped on and found a seat. We still had doubt since everything was in a different languages (two different languages to be exact: Dutch and French), but we figured the worst that could happen is that we'd end up in some random place that could potentially be cool. Well, we were on the right train and everything was perfectly fine.

Our "we did it!" pictures after we finally were on our way after that stressful chain of events!

After about an hour on the train, we finally arrived in Bruges. We followed a giant group of people to the city center, but on the way I spotted a black cat in a parking lot. OBVIOUSLY, I immediately went over to the cat to try to pet it. The cats in Sevilla don't like people, so I was kinda expecting this cat to run away from me, but it totally didn't! It wanted to be petted and was purring and being adorable. Then Isis and Genisis came to pet it and it tried to walk away, so my sassiness came out and I was like "GET AWAY I HAVE TO PET THIS CAT IT DOESN'T LIKE YOU."  So Genisis just took pictures of me petting the cat.

New cat friend

Highlight of my entire time in Belgium -- first cat I've petted since September when I was home with my own cats

So after my whole cat freak out episode, we went on our way to explore Bruges. It was such a beautiful city. We couldn't have picked a better last minute thing to do while in Belgium. It was so quaint and cute and I loved it so much! Here's a ton of photos because words can't describe my time here very well:

Genisis and Isis on one of the many bridges in Bruges

...and me on one of the many bridges in Bruges!

Cute lil' hummingbird 

on another bridge!

Apparently Bruges is the chocolate capital of the world...so they made a nativity scene out of chocolate! 

More waffles! These were cute with little Belgian flags on them, too

I'm including this picture because it cracks me up/my sass is showing. I was staring down someone for walking into my photo (right before they walked into the frame).

Okay, a better picture!

Overall, I'd recommend Bruges before I would recommend Brussels. I enjoyed my entire time there, and I'd love to go back someday!

After exploring the city for the entire afternoon and buying our host families some chocolate, we made it back to the train station to purchase our tickets back to Brussels. Our return tickets were only 6€. Why can't travel be this cheap in America...? Ugh.

Upon our return to Brussels, we went to a Korean BBQ restaurant that Isis and Genisis saw earlier that they really wanted to go to. I was still full from that waffle from earlier (that had normal milk chocolate on it), so I wasn't feeling too good (the waffle was so good though, still no regrets...but I definitely prefer dark chocolate to normal chocolate now). They got some really awesome kimchi fried rice (well it smelled good; I didn't have any), and I just had a small bowl of miso soup.

Now this is where I got super mad at myself. After we ate, we went back to the hostel. When we got back, I looked at the chocolate that Genisis and Isis got for their host family, and I went to grab mine to put it away when I REALIZED I DIDN'T HAVE IT. I stupidly left Toni's chocolate in the Korean restaurant! What is with me and leaving stuff behind in restaurants?! I was sooo mad. It's such a stupid thing to be mad about, but this was the SECOND time time two weeks where I had left something behind in a restaurant! I can't believe it. It made me even more mad because AS WE WERE LEAVING, I mentally checked in my mind if I had everything. I was like, "Okay...phone, wallet, camera, bag...I'm good to go!"

So I pouted about the chocolate for a good 15 minutes until I forgot about it and went to bed so I could get up early and get ready to go back to Sevilla the next day.

The next morning, we set out early to get to the airport, but first we couldn't leave Brussels without seeing the Manneken Pis statue. Once again, it was lookin' kinda drizzly outside, but we made it to the statue without getting rained on.

 It was kind of a let down. We were expecting some kind of big ol' monument, but it was just this tiny lil' baby on a street corner. Ehhh. Luckily, there was an open chocolate shop next to the statue, and I went in and bought Toni MORE chocolate that I definitely was NOT going to lose. This time I got her some truffles. Turns out that losing the first box of chocolates was for the better, because truffles are actually her favorite (the first box was just an assortment of different chocolates from a neat little chocolate shop), and I even heard her bragging on the phone about the truffles to her friends today. #success

My time in Belgium ended with snow. Yes, you heard that right, snooowwww. I had wanted it to snow while I was there, but not necessarily on the day I was leaving. Actually, especially on the day I was leaving...I wasn't trying to get my flight delayed. We were super worried we were gonna get delayed because they were calling out delayed flights left and right, but luckily the one to Sevilla was still going on time. When it came time to board the plane and leave, I was totally convinced we were going to slip off the runway and die. I've never been so tense during take off. Obviously everything was fine because here I am writing all of this, but still...I was terrified.

A crappy picture of the snow outside of the airport...when it was just beginning. When we left there was at least two or three inches on the grass, and slush everywhere else!

So we finally made it back to Sevilla, and as soon as we stepped off the plane we noticed the giant weather difference. It was still cold, but we called it warm. Also, I felt sooo much better being back in Spain where I could actually understand people/signs/etc (never thought I'd say that!!).

When I finally got back to my piso, Toni was super glad to see me. I was super happy to eat dinner, change into my pajamas, and go to sleep in my own bed with clean sheets that didn't smell questionably dirty.

It was a really good trip, and I'm super glad I got the chance to go, but I sure hope that my next trip (Dublin!) has better weather...