Amsterdam & Brussels!

Okay, so I really haven’t updated this in a while and a lot has gone down! There’s going to be a few separate blog posts to sum it all up..

First thing is first though- AMSTERDAM AND BRUSSELS! This was the first trip that my group of friends had planned to leave the country. Departing Friday morning at 8:00am, we were prepared for one of the best weekends of our lives. The night before, I had printed boarding passes, train schedules, shuttle tickets, etc. and we were set to go. After a small hiccup with the taxi that we ordered for 6:30AM- we were on our way to the airport with nothing but our backpacks (and several layers of clothing to make sure the bags were the right size!). At the airport, because we had done online check-in, we jumped right into the security line to go to our gate. Little did we know that we needed to get a visa stamp before clearing security, so after waiting in the line and getting to the front, we had to step out and go back to the check-in desk for this stamp. The stamp took little to no time, but because of the taxi delay, we were already behind schedule and cutting it close to the 7:30 AM gate closure. We got our stamps, jumped in the Business class line at security (totally legit mind you, the original security man said we could J), and began to run. Surprise! The Ryanair gates are at the very end of the terminal that’s about 2 miles long! (That might be an exaggeration, but at 7:30 in the morning with a huge backpack on your back, it seemed like it). We got to the terminal on time though, because Ryanair hadn’t closed the gate yet and/or even begun to board. After that scare, we were happy to be seated on the plane and on our way to Brussels. The flight was only about an hour and a half- not bad at all! We touched down in Brussels at 10:30 (with an hour time difference).

Friday was mainly dedicated to travel, as we needed to get to Amsterdam to check into our hostel for 2 nights before we came back to Brussels. Ryanair flies into the most inconvenient airports ever, so in order to get to center of Brussels, we left Charleroi at 11:45 and took a 40 minute shuttle to Bruxelles Midi- the main train station in the city. From here, we caught a train that would take us to Amsterdam. We got to Amsterdam around 5:00pm and made our way to the hostel we would be staying at, called Shelter City. It was a fairly nice hostel, with God Loves You paintings over all the walls (did I mention it was a Christian hostel?), great security and comfortable rooms. It was also very centrally located, right next to Nieuwmarkt Square!

Courtyard shots of the hostel!

Friday night, all of us went out to eat at a restaurant that was right down the road from our hostel. It was a great place to go- we split a delicious bottle of white wine, and I had roasted chicken, salad and chips. It was pretty fairly priced, especially for a city as expensive as Amsterdam! After this, we went back to the hostel, settled in a bit, and then ventured into the center of Nieuwmarkt Square to a coffee shop called “The Jolly Joker”. We went to bed relatively early because we wanted to accomplish a lot on Saturday so we didn’t want to be tired!

Saturday morning we got up early and got ready to make our way over to the Van Gogh museum. Not having computers with us, we had to rely on word-of-mouth to find our way to the museum. It was located across the city, but luckily, it was a great day out and we had no troubles with the weather! Along the way, we found a lot of little shops for souvenirs and also stumbled upon Dam Square, another central part of the city. It was absolutely gorgeous!

When we finally got to Museumplein (where the museum was located), we also realized that we had found the famous I Amsterdam sign! We had a lot of fun taking pictures with the sign too.

The Van Gogh museum was amazing. Unfortunately we  were not allowed to take photographs at all, but it’s understandable in order to preserve the one-of-a-kind artwork that the museum housed. The museum took us through Van Gogh’s life by floor, also showing artwork from people who he saw as major influences to his own work. It also guided us through many of the works of his contemporaries too, which I thought was really cool. The artwork was absolutely breathtaking- even moreso because we were there in person. You can’t see the texture and layers of his paintings from a photograph, but in person, you can see the thickness of the paint he was using, the way the ridges of dried paint help to form the full picture. It was a really amazing experience overall.

After the Van Gogh museum, we grabbed some lunch at a local restaurant. We walked around the city for a while, popped into a few coffeeshops along the way, and took in as much of the city as we could in such a short period of time. Here are some photos from the day:

On Sunday morning, we woke up early, packed up all of our stuff from the hostel and checked out. We got on a train at about 10 that got us back to Brussels by 1:00, so we still had a pretty full day. We browsed through a local flea market right outside of the train station for a little while and then made our way to the biggest thing we had on our list: Grand Place. This city square is cobblestone from corner to corner and on each side of you, some of the most ornate buildings rose about 6 stories. The architecture here was amazing, and the buildings took your breath away.

We continued to walk around the city, and took in the best that Brussels had to offer- waffles and chocolate! The particular place that we stopped to get waffles was absolutely amazing- there was a layer of melted sugar on the inside of the waffle- topped with Raspberry sauce it really couldn’t get much better!

We also went to a few chocolate shops and picked up some goodies! My favorite was the coconut truffle from ‘La Belgique Gourmande’. We finally stumbled upon Mannequin Pis- the famous statue of a boy peeing into a pool. It was a lot smaller than we imagined!

We continued to walk around and take in the sights- stopped by St. Nicolas’ Church and passing some street art on the way! A few of us actually took home a canvas for only 15 euro. Mine is a gorgeous red and orange abstract picture of African figures- I can’t wait to hang it on my wall when I get home!

When it started getting dark out, we hopped on a shuttle back out to Charleroi, where we stayed in the airport hotel for the night so that we were closer in the morning to be able to catch our 7:00 flight! We made the flight with perfect timing the next morning, and landed in Dublin again at 7:35. Then it was time for me to go to sleep until my class at 1:00.

The weekend was one of the best I’ve ever had. I’m so glad that I’m getting the opportunity to travel as much as I have been/plan to in the next 2 months!