Home from our first weekend get away!

We arrived home on sunday very tired, full of chocolate and waffles, and ready for a good nights sleep in our beds back in Caceres.

Thursday night we took the 4:00pm bus from Caceres-Madrid and arrived at the airport about 5 hours later. We managed through the metros fine, and parked our backpacks at the airport in the corner by the RyanAir booths. Any attempt at sleeping can be hard when youre sleeping on hard tile floors, but I managed to close my eyes for about a half hour. After waiting in line, being pushed and shoved onto the plane, we took off from Madrid at 6:30 and flew in the Charleroi Airport in Brussels, Belgium. By this time, we were all pretty exhausted, but anxious to get to the bus station to meet up with the guy we were planning on CouchSurfing with. For those who arent familiar with that term, couch surfing is an online network that a lot of European travelers use to find people in different cities, and then stay at their homes for free. We found a man named Pieter who was willing to house the four of us, so he came and met us at the bus station shortly after we got into town. We went out to breakfast and then headed to his house to put our stuff away. Although Pieter was a very nice man, we decided not to stay with him due to his living conditions and the fact that his home was about a 15 minutes bus ride outside of Brussels. Although we were a little bummed that couchsurfing didnt work for us on our first trip, we arent completely opposed to trying it again. Its a great way to save some money as well as meet new people. It ended up working to our advantage though since Pieter took the time over the weekend to show us around town and help us naviagate the buses and metros around the city.

We spent much of friday walking around the city. Checking out all of the old buildings and shops was really neat. It was a perfect day outside and we definitely enjoyed the sunshine! We stopped at a chocolate museum to enjoy some sweets as well as learn how they make the infamous belgium chocolates. It was a lot of fun to get a little taste of one of the many chocolate stores/museums in Brussels.

After finding a hostel in Brussels, we went back on the town to meet up with Pieter for dinner. We went to a popular restaurant and enjoyed some Brisket and Fries, one of the more famous types of food in Belgium. It was really good meat, and even though it was a little pricey, we decided it was worth the money to try something authentic. After dinner we walked around the city at night and had a chance to take a lot of pictures of both the Grand Place as well as St. Michaels Cathedral. We headed back to our hostel around 12:00 to try and get some good sleep, considering we hadnt really slept in the past 24 hours. Our hostel was really great. In a nicer part of town, it was gated in, had free internet, a bar, ping pong tables, and more importantly: clean sheets, a bed, and a shower in our own 4 person room. We slept like rocks and woke up around 8:00 to get ready for another day.

Saturday morning we took some time to do a little more sightseeing. We walked around by the Royal Palace, more of the cathedrals, a castle, and the shopping district of Brussels. We also had the chance to eat some good authentic belgium waffles; one more thing to check off the list. It was amazing to say the least. That same morning we went to this really neat instrument museum. It was about 6 floors of instruments from all over the world and from many different periods of time. You walked around and listened to headphones that would play the music of the instrument you stood in front of. This was definitely one of my favorite things that we saw. After walking around and gorging ourselves on chocolate and waffles, we decided to go get some normal food at a little restaurant by the grand place. We had been sitting there awhile, when a lady with a southern accent offered to take our picture for us. She was sitting by herself at the table adjacent to ours, so we asked her to join us at our table. We ended up spending about two hours talking with our new friend, Cindy from Texas, and enjoying listening to all of the places that she has traveled. She told us about how her job has opened up many opportunites for her to travel; which she has definitely taken advantage of. Her independent spirit was very inspirational, and we truly enjoyed her company. During our conversation we brought up how we were going to go to the train station to put our backpacks in lockers for the night so we could go out to the bars without them, but Cindy decided to go out of her way to help us out. She happened to be staying at a Marriot in town, and was able to talk to the people at the front desk who let us keep our bags in the hotel for the night while we went out to the bars. After we left the hotel, Cindy headed back to her hotel and we all swapped emails and info and promised to keep in touch. Which we most certainly will!

Saturday night was spent walking around town looking for bars with good belgium beer. We ended up at a well recommended bar called Delirium. They had more beers than I could count on tap, and we sampled a few while we were there. Afterwards, we went to an irish pub and danced until about 2:00. We headed towards the bus station to go and sleep until our bus came, but to our dismay, the station was closed. This presented quite the problem since we were in a rough part of town, with our backpacks on, looking pretty american. We had a little run in with some people that freaked me out enough to find the nearest mcdonalds to hull up in until 4:30 when our other bus took off. We made it in time to catch the bus, and then slept at the airport on the floor for about an hour until our flight took off. We arrived in Madrid and spent our next couple of hours walking around downtown. We checked out the plaza mayor, puerto del sol, and the royal palace. We were pretty much dead by then, so we decided to catch the metro and wait for our bus at the station. We finally got back to Caceres around 8:30pm after a very long day of traveling.

Overall, it was a great experience. We got to see the sights of belgium, taste a bit of what they are famous for, and meet some great, interesting people! I learned a lot about traveling, and how to travel safe. That is costs money to use the bathrooms in Brussels. How to comfortably enough sleep in airport terminals, the ins and outs of the metro of Madrid, and how good it feels to realize youve accomplished your first big weekend trip without any problems...atleast any big ones:)

Looking forward to future trips as well as a normal week back "home"