Scottish Adventures: the letter B suits me: travels pt. DEUX

Before I continue with Part 2 of Belgium travels, can I just point out how much the letter B shows up in things I do? I go to Baylor where their mascot is the bear; my name is Beth; I'm learning to play bagpipes; I went to Belgium where I visited Brussels and Bruges. They drink lots of beer. Ha.

Anyways...I finished the last post talking about Tuesday. So Wednesday. BRUGES. or Brugge. That's the French spelling. We took a train and got there shortly after 11. The ride was only an hour. We had a little trouble figuring out what train we wanted, but we just asked someone if it was the right train and then we saw this guy from our hostel and asked if he was going to Brugge too since he was getting on the same train, but he wasn't; there were other stops along the way. Brugge was the first one I think. Regardless, one hour on a train and we were there! We found a little information place and got a map and then just followed a bunch of people closer to the city center and the explorers were off and running! The map we had to buy had a list of 10 things to see in Brugge so after we'd seen the main central area and bumped into a little market selling food and flowers, we looked on that list and found the most photographed place in Brugge and saw some more of the canal. Basically, we just walked around the whole time we were there trying to find cool stuff to see. Then we started getting hungry and came to the conclusion that everything in Brugge is overpriced and not surprisingly there weren't even that many places to chose from because a lot were shopping sorts of places, oh tourist town. So then we decided we'd just go back to Brussels a little earlier than planned since there wasn't really anything else we knew to do or see that we hadn't already found. We made our way back to the train station and saw this other train station or some sort of important building that was on the 10 things to do/see and that was one we hadn't seen yet! Ha. Once getting back to Brussels, we got waffles on the cheap! I just had a plain one and seriously, pretty sure I died and went to heaven. It was so good! It was warm and fresh, and plain is relative; it had sugar or something sweet on it and it was perfect! I want to go back to Brussels, just for the waffles. Later, after realizing a waffle wasn't going to hold the hunger off that long, we searched for a good pizza place because we were all kind of craving it. I found this local Italian place that sounded pretty nice from the reviews online so that's where we went. I failed to realize that all the reviews had been automatically translated from French into English, which wouldn't have mattered much except we soon came to see that we'd pick a super local place; no one knew English! The guy who gave us our menus did a tiny bit, but our waitress didn't know any so we couldn't ask for still water because it wasn't listed on the menu and I couldn't ask a question about something I was debating trying, so we all just got Margarita pizzas. It was really good pizza, so I'm not complaining. The place was really small and you could see the cook making all the food because the kitchen was open and just in a corner of the restaurant. Cozy. Needless to say, the locals got it right, it was good food. That was the only time we really suffered not knowing much French past hello, good bye, thank you, please, and what's your name? Oh well. Another thing of note, Scottish people are so much more friendly. Maybe it was because there's a language barrier, but I felt like the people in Belgium weren't nearly as smiley and whatever.

Thursday we had to be checked out of the hostel by 11, but that was plenty of time. We were allowed to stay after we'd checked out too, so we stayed a little longer figuring out where things were that we wanted to do before we left and how to get to the right station that the bus that takes us to the airport would be at. Our flight wasn't leaving until 9 though so we had plenty of time before we had to get the bus [at 6]. I wish we could've gotten an earlier flight, but hey, this was a cheap Ryanair flight so it was the only one they had and we took it! We went to this art museum we had seen on Tuesday and got the combo ticket so we could see the older art since Maddie really likes art history and I thought it'd be good to maybe see art that I'd seen in class. But I was soon reminded that when I'm hungry and tired, I get grumpy and museums get really old really fast. So I was kind of a grumpy gills for the latter part of our visit to the museum until we finally left and got waffles again. Haha. I feel like the best part of Belgium for me was the food. Why am I not surprised? I love food. Anyways, we got waffles at the same place we had on Wednesday, only this time I got mine with chocolate! Noms. I could go on about the waffles. I miss walking around and smelling them wherever we went because there was never a shop or waffle van far away. So excellent. It's a wonder the people in Belgium aren't fatter. Maybe because they actually can walk places instead of having to drive everywhere? After we got waffles, we found our way to the tram and went to the station to wait before we had to catch the bus to the airport. So much waiting, but eventually we got to the airport and waited some more and then before we knew it, it was bye Belgium, hello again Scotland! It felt really good to come back to familiarity and a language I could understand [minus the fact I thought the guy at customs asked what we were studying at university, not which university we're at..awk]. I'm all about a nice, friendly Scottish accent. It sounds so right. Haha It's also strange to think that coming back to Scotland was like coming home. I feel settled enough here to not feel as out of place. So lovely. It's already March. Soon I'll be off on Spring Break adventures with my mom and sister. Can't wait. But we've still got a month and a few days before that gets here!