we have arrived!

so we landed today at 8:00am brussels time, which would be 2:00am sarasota time. the flight was good, heather and i slept semi-comfortably in coach while our a-hole friends lounged around in first class for basically free (and i literally mean free)! once we landed, we got our passports stamped (woo! first stamp) and grabbed our bags and some euros.

watching cydney try to drag/carry/pull her giant duffels was quite memorable. cydney, with her duffel that weighs half as much as her and another normal size wheeling bag (and a backpack), literally dragged her bags down the stairs at the north train station in brussels to make sure that every belgian within 30 miles knew that we had arrived, because that's how loud her bags were. getting on/off the train was interesting, as you can imagine.

heather and i on the train from the airport

besides all of the amused stares we got in the train station, belgians have been incredibly friendly! we walked around in the general area of our hostel, asking person after person, before we ventured inside the public library and dragged someone out to point us in the direction we were already facing. but no fear! we found it safe and sound. finally. so we locked up our bags in the storage room, freshened up (and by freshened up, i mean wiped our faces), and headed out with our new brussels map in hand!

what did we find? loads of stuff. ..

me getting a latte at illy

me with the front door to this small church we found. amazing.

we saw a ton of sights on one half of brussels today. including some cathedrals, the town square, and the famous fountain of a boy peeing. yep, you read that right, a little boy peeing. it's incredibly famous here, and we all still don't know why. they sell candies of the naked boy, tiny statues, wine and bottle openers, and so on... very interesting.

beautiful brussels buildings (lower far right is where we ate dinner night one)

belgian waffles are everywhere

we were all dead at about 2:30pm so we came back to the hostel and laid down a little until dinner time. sadly, thats when we discovered that cydney's duffel had been rained on in atlanta before we took off and practically everything she had packed was soaked. so our room has turned into a giant laundry line.

once we recovered from the day's events, we headed out once again, but this time i was prepared with long underwear under my jeans. we ate at a really cool restaurant and ordered some local cuisine. i ordered white sausage with apple sauce (it's a belgian dish...?) but they said they were out. so i settled for meatballs in spaghetti sauce with mashed potatoes. apparently another belgian dish. then the girls hit one of the million chocolate stores on the way back to the hostel.

my belgian beer i had with dinner

tomorrow we're exploring a little farther from home. should be good! i have mapped out some fun things for us.