My friends Polly and Connor (who I met in Australia) and I went to Brussels a couple of weeks ago on a weekend getaway to visit our friend Bruno (who we also met in Australia). Polly and Connor are just as obsessed with travel as I am so it was basically an excuse to visit a new country whilst having a mini reunion with everyone. My friend lives opposite Nottingham Coach Station so I stayed at hers the night before as I was up on Friday morning for the 6.30am coach to Heathrow. The 5.30am wake up call wasn't fun but I wanted to make sure I was at the airport extra early just in case we hit traffic on the way down. Luckily everything ran on time so I had a couple of hours to kill at the airport before Polly and Connor caught the train in from Portsmouth. A glass of wine at the airport followed by free wine on the plane meant that I was pretty drunk by the time we arrived in Brussels... so naturally we got the beers in as we were waiting for Bruno to pick us up. We checked in to our hostel (which was a 10 second walk from the main square in Brussels) and sipped on sangria surrounded by the stunning architecture of Grand Place. I've been to a lot of European cities but Brussels is by far the prettiest! It's not somewhere a lot of people would think to visit but I would 100% recommend it - for scenery and atmosphere!
After dinner, Bruno left us for tennis club so the 3 of us headed out on the cobbled side streets for some Belgian beer (which FYI is double the strength of English beer!) We asked around for where the best youth bars were and came across a place called Delirium which was SO good. We got chatting to these guys from London and at this point Connor had bought me about 8 beers so everything turned into a giant blur!
The next morning, we took our hungover and sleep deprived selves (8 bed dorm + snorers = NO SLEEP) to breakfast at an outdoor cafe before heading off to explore the city. Who knew the Smurfs originated from Belgium ay? I did my research before we booked the trip and knew there was a water park and place called Mini Europe we could go to so we decided to go there to make the most of the boiling hot weather we were blessed with! The water park was so much fun and had the craziest slides with triple rubber dinghy's and outdoor cannon balls (watch here)!
We went back to our hostel (which had the coolest historian themed common room!) to get ready and then Bruno drove us about half an hour out of Brussels to Leuven - the city he went to university. The place was absolutely stunning and had such a great atmosphere with tons of people sat outside eating and drinking under the sunset. We went for a lovely meal at a posh restaurant followed by a few drinks outside in the main square. It was perfect.
Bruno took us to his very swanky apartment (did I mention he's a 30 year old real estate lawyer?) for more drinks before we headed back to Brussels to pass out on our not quite as luxurious bunk beds (talk about going from a 10 to a 4...)
Our flight wasn't until the afternoon so we squeezed in some last minute sightseeing to the 'Pissing Boy' (don't ask) and bought some souvenirs from Pandora and the Belgian chocolate shop. Connor bought us all matching bracelets from the Hard Rock Cafe too which was really cute!
TOTAL COST OF THE TRIP
City centre hostel (bunk bed in an 8 bed dorm) = £22 per person per night
Flights with British Airways from LHR > BRU = £140 return
Entrance to Mini Europe + Oceade water park = £19
Spending money = UP TO YOU!
Spending money = UP TO YOU!
Vlogging my travels is something I've always wanted to do but unless you're 100% committed to it, it's REALLY easy to forget! I made a conscious effort to film everything when we were away in Brussels and I'm so glad I did! Just goes to show that you don't necessarily need iMovie and an expensive camera to make decent videos - an iPhone and Movie Maker can work just as well! I'm hoping to improve the quality of my videos each time I go away but let me know what you think of my first attempt!
No comments:
Post a Comment