I Didn't Go to Bruges

So my first adventure out of Spain was to the lovely city of Brussels to visit my dear friend Emily H, who I have mentioned a few times in this blog. But lest you think everything was charming and wonderful, let me recount my journey there.

Granada is a hard city to travel out of. It has a tiny airport, much like that of Binghamton, with 3 gates. Nor is it on the high speed rail line, though it does have a good bus station, with lots of useful buses. My plan was to take a bus from Granada to Málaga, which has a big airport, to catch a plane at 11:45 am. Took the bus at 8, which got me there at 10, a little late. Waited for 20 minutes to catch the bus from the bus station to the airport, got a little worried. Traveled for 40 minutes to get to the airport because of construction, got a lot worried. Walked up to departures and realized I had no idea what to do because I had booked with an obscure airline, panicked. I ran around for 10 minutes before finding the right desk, only to find out at the next desk over that it had closed 10 minutes ago and I couldn't check in to my flight that hadn't even started boarding yet. (Lesson learned.)

So, completely and absolutely calm, I headed over to information, where I was given my airline's number and was told that the next flight to Brussels on a different airline left around 2. I went to that airline's office, where 2 of the people that had previously told me that I couldn't check in told me that I couldn't talk to someone until 12. Believing that this unknown worker was on break until 12, I waited until 12:30, when the same two people shifted over a desk and beckoned me to come talk to them. Long story short, I bought another ticket from them and boarded without a problem. Except that I had locked my phone by turning it off for the flight, and didn't remember the key to open it.

Once I got to Brussels National, I wandered around the airport for a half hour trying to find the buses. Found them, got off at the right stop, and asked for directions from various store owners, since I had Emily's address and no phone. I managed to find her at last, and collapsed exhausted with some bread and cheese.

We met Mike at the train station later (see his post for his fun travel stories that also involve buying another ticket) and proceeded to have a great weekend! Brussels is a really beautiful city that gets the shaft because it's a stopping place for Paris, Bruges, etc. Public transportation is rather confusing, but everything's lovely, a bit quirky (Brussels claim to fame is a statue of a peeing boy), and delicious.

Some highlights:














Brussels is home to the EU, so there are lots of imposing glass buildings.














Touring the Parliament building. Security is really top-notch (nope) at the EU, but Emily's
interning there, so we had an in. This is a big room where they decide important things.


















Here's a couple of Brussel's really cool old buildings. We did lots of walking around, seeing the sights and staying warm.














We also went to Museum Night, where we had access to 14 museums in 5 hours...We did 4. The instrument museum was by far the coolest. You wandered around and listened to music from 1000s of different instruments on a headphone set while looking at said instruments.


















The instrument museum quickly turned into a dance party. This picture is great- it serves for purposes of anonymity and hilarity.

Other highlights included food/drink. I had a healthy array of Belgian waffles, Belgian chocolate, hot chocolate, french fries with mayonnaise, pastries, bread, cheese, and Belgian beer. Not all together. Though I did eat some chocolate for breakfast.