travel bug pt. 1

So it's been a while and for a good reason; I've been traveling!!
The greatest thing about studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh is that they have what is called "Innovative Learning Week". Basically, it's a week off of official classes and there are just random seminars and events going on over the week that aren't required at all, but are there for learning purposes more for people who actually go to school here to learn about different aspects related to their major or other majors they may be interested in. At least that's how I see it. Thus, for us study abroad kids, it's obviously going to be pinned as a week of travel. Even kids that do go here go travel or back home. But apparently enough people go to the events so it exists. and it is fabulous.
So last Saturday, I went on a trip with the ISC to Aberdeen, Scotland. We were supposed to get to see two castles and spend time exploring Aberdeen, but things didn't work out that way and there was a lot of miscommunication so we ended up just seeing one castle [and having to pay again if we wanted to go in and see more of it! I ended up not doing that because I didn't know if we'd be refunded 100% and the castle was pretty spectacular without seeing the innards.] and spending 2 hours wandering around Aberdeen. It was fun to get to do some other Scottish city exploring.

Dunnotar Castle, Aberdeen

Then Monday, which was the start of Innovative Learning Week. My alarm woke me up at 5:30 am and I was sitting in a taxi on the way to the airport by 6. My backpack was stuffed and because the dining hall obviously wasn't open, I packed as many snacks as I could for breakfast and future breakfasts. Nothing like some multigrain Cheerios and weird apple bars from Tesco! So we got to the airport and got our passports checked or whatever, went through security [they didn't make everyone take off their shoes! It was so nice! haha], and then waited to get on our plane. Ryanair doesn't assign seats unless you pay so it was pretty much a mad rush to get our boarding passes checked and to get on the plane. We had to wait on this shuttle bus thing for forever, but finally it moved and we got to our plane and successfully found 3 seats in a row so Maddie, Elizabeth, and I could all sit together!

Grand Place, Brussels

Eventually, we made it to Brussels after a little confusion in trying to get bus tickets to the city. The station where the airport bus dropped us off was still a ways away from our hostel, but I'd printed out directions for the supposed 15 min walk. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the road we wanted to go on and wandered around for much too long, so we broke down and got a taxi. Pretty certain the taxi guy ripped us off, but at least we got to our hostel. Except when we got to our hostel, we had to wait until 4pm before we could check in and drop off our bags and it was only 1:30 so we spent the next couple of hours wandering around Brussels and trying not to kill our backs. Ha. We saw the Grand Place and I tried to do Ellen Degeneres' "Dance Dare" by dancing behind some random lady but she turned around really quickly [probably because I was wearing my backbag and it was clanging...] and I didn't notice. Awkward. Once it was 4, we got checked in at our hostel and settled in there a bit and then decided to head out to find somewhere to eat dinner. We ended up at this yummy Italian restaurant, but not after being accosted by multiple restaurant guys trying to offer us deals to get us to eat their food.

Showing how to make chocolates

Tuesday, we started our day by going to the Museum of Cocoa and Chocolate. This was fantastic, if only for all the chocolate samples we got to eat. We walked to the Central Station to look into getting train tickets to Bruges, and found Parliament and a strange statue park, as well as a bunch of museums. We went to this one called the Coudenberg or something like that. It was basically an underground palace. Really cool to walk below the city. After that we were pretty ravenous, so we found a place to get frites [aka french fries]. I love how they serve them in a cone, but I didn't like how the sauce really overwhelmed the top fries and then the poor bottom ones got nothing. I got mine with Andalouse [sp?] sauce which was pretty good. I don't really like fries to begin with but they're big in Belgium so I couldn't not have them, basically like a heart attack in a cone because the guy put so much salt on them and then slathered the top in the sauce, and obviously they're fried. Delicious. I think once we finished those, we went back to the hostel to figure out the public transport system so we could go to the Atomium. That's this crazy structure that was made for the World's Fair in 1900 something. Now it's just like the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower...a symbol of Belgium, but no real purpose. It was much larger than I expected it to be, but there was nothing else to do around where it was, so it was a quick trip. When we got back, guess what was on TV? BAYLOR VS UT! Granted it was a game that originally played Monday and it was Tuesday but go ESPN America for showing it and there weren't commercials. =) Baylor also pulled out a win which was awesome. We had a quickish dinner at a kebab [they spelled it 'kebap'] place because it was cold out so we didn't want to walk far and it was cheaper, too! Later, around 10, we went to Delirium Cafe, this crazy bar that has something around 2000 different beers and 3 levels. It was really a cool atmosphere as it wasn't just young people, but older people, too.  I actually tried several sips of beer; the first kind, Leroy Christmas, was a dark beer and not very appealing. We moved to a different room and Maddie and Elizabeth got a strawberry beer and a cherry beer. The cherry one tasted like cough syrup, but the strawberry was a little better. I think it's safe to say that I won't become a beer drinker ever, though. Ha.

Well, I'm gonna end this post here, so it doesn't get too overwhelming to read. I'll write about Wednesday and Thursday later this week!
Here are some more pictures to enjoy!

A view of Brussels

Coudenberg

Royal Palace, Brussels

Frites, a Brussels staple

Atomium