Belgium to visit Manon!

Belgium <3

Manon and Me!!

To all of you from Chelmsford you should just book your trip to Belgium now to visit Manon! It was amazing and so awesome to visit her! And I am also assuming that you are all a little jealous right now...

Gotta love Ryanair

Anyway I was leaving on a 7:50 a.m. flight on Friday morning from Dublin therefore I left Galway at 1:00 a.m. on a bus to the Dublin Airport so I would get there on time. I slept for most of the ride and then easily made it through security. I got some breakfast and read until my flight. The flight itself was boring but I was too excited to do much of anything. I got off the plane, went through customs (trying to speak french but that failed in like 2 seconds). When I got outside the first person I saw was Manon!!!!!!! (and yes this post will have a ton of !!!!!!!!!! everywhere because it was amazing). We just freaked out and hugged each other for a while before heading to her car. Its crazy that she can drive because when she was in the USA with us for her senior year she couldn't drive. Also it was SUNNY! And living in Ireland I have not seen a full day of sun in a while. Ah I love the sun!

Sun!!!

Anyway we talked the entire way to her college. Once we got there we sat outside with her friends and then went to the library so I could take a quick online test (because my teacher is dumb and makes us take online tests only on Fridays from 7am-2pm... and when some of us travel it sucks). We then went in search of food, a.k.a the cafeteria. After Manon actually had to go to class so I went with her to learn about Roman Law, in French of course. Not speaking French I went on my computer and updated my blogs and talked to a few people on facebook chat. 

Me and the city of Liége 

After class we were going back to Manon's town, which is called Liége. We drove around for a bit then parked and walked up this hill. At the top was the most amazing view of the city. We walked down the Montange de Bueren, which has 374 steps and tried to count them on our way but failed around the 300th step. Once we got to the bottom we walked around and chilled out. We then went back to her house where I got to meet her dad, who is awesome and was making us a Belgian dinner! We had boulets a la la liégeoise, which is kind of like swedish meatballs with a home made sauce and french fries. It was amazing and her dad is a great cook. 

Everyone at Le Carre

We then hopped in the car and went to Le Carre (the square). Le carre is an awesome square of streets, which are too small to drive on, but have bars all around them. We met up with some of Manon's friends from college where I got to experience my first Belgium beer called Pecheresse, which was sweet and amazing, and we danced and had a great time. We then went home and I passed out in 2 seconds, mostly because I had not really slept since two nights before due to traveling. 

PIZZA!

On Saturday we slept in until around 11. Once we woke up we had breakfast and then rushed to make our pizza that we would eat for lunch so we could get out the door. Manon made pineapple and tuna pizza which sounds interesting but tasted amazing and I will make it again! Manon then took me to the Galler chocolate factory where I bought massive amounts of chocolate, some to eat in Ireland and some to make it home to the USA. 

The cute little Belgium children

We then went to Scouts. A quick description of Scouts: it is a mixture of girl scouts and boy scouts. There are age brackets where the children are put into. The older ones (like Manon) run the scouts for the younger ones. Most children in Belgium are part of a scouts group. 

So back to my trip. When we got to Scouts I met the other people who were in charge with Manon. (her group is kids from the ages of 8 to 12). One of her friends, Jerome, decided that it would be fun to throw a bucket of water on all of us from the roof, which was really funny. We then got together before the children came and came up with the game that the kids would play that day. It was a game kind of like capture the flag. When the kids got there they greeted everyone (in Belgium everyone kisses each other on the cheek when they great each other). It was entertaining because I was a stranger to them some of them were shy and didn't say hi but others just came right up to me and kissed me on the cheek and said Bonjour! They were so adorable. Some of them spoke some english and it was really fun to try and speak French to them when they were trying to talk to me in english. We then took the group into the woods and played the game for about an hour before it was time to head back. One of the other leader's Arnaud let the little girls put the dried pasta in his hair (we were using it as part of the game). This brought on an idea from the other kids to attack Manon with the other dried pasta and thus started a game of attack Manon, which I found entertaining and ended with her having a lot of stuff down her shirt. lol. 

Manon playing Kin-Ball ^

After the game we headed back to Manon's car to head to her Kin-ball game. On the way we ate the pizza, super delicious. I won't even try to explain Kin-ball because it is like nothing that we have at home. Manon explained it to me so I mostly understood what was going on while they played. The game went fast and we were soon heading off to pick up some of Manon's friends to head into Brussles for the night. 

Atomium!!!

We picked up Simon and Benedicte and started the hour drive, listing to Manon's CD's of american music from our senior year. Once we got into Brussles, Manon drove us straight to the Atomium, which was build for the worlds fair. There was a lot of girlish screaming once we saw it all lit up in the night. (my camera did not do it justice because I couldn't figure out the night settings very well). We walked all around it and there were tons of cars everywhere because there was a huge soccer game that night, which I have no idea who was playing or who won. We took lots of pictures near the Welcome letters under the Atomium and had tons of fun.

Us at the Grand Place

We then headed into the city driving past the King's house, and yes there is a King, SO COOL! We headed to find some food and of course being in Belgium I needed to have a Belgian waffle. I got one with bananas, chocolate, and whipped cream. YUM! We walked around the Grand Place, saw the statue of the little man peeing, hehe, aka Mannenpis, and then went to the Delirium for some Belgian beer. I had one made from cherries, it was red and very sweet. So delicious. After a busy day and night we drove back and passed out in a few minutes. I took the time to reset my clock to reflect day light savings hour, and its a good thing I did...

View of the Market from the canal

The next morning I woke up and hopped in the shower. We were heading off to Brugge. After finishing my shower I was confused as to why Manon was still asleep so I went to wake her, turns out she forgot to set her clock for day light savings time... So funny. We rushed around getting everything we needed and then we went to the bus stop to get to the train station. We boarded the train and were off, with some time to relax on the ride. Once we got to Brugge we left the train station and were in the cutest town! They have horse drawn carriages everywhere and it is a little like stepping into the past. We spent the day wandering around in and out of the shops, which there are a million chocolate shops and some you can even see them making their creations. After having a quick lunch we made our way to one of my favorite things, a boat tour down the canals in the city. We went all over and the driver talked about the history of the city and pointed out various places of interest. There was also the cutest dog hanging out of one of the windows of someone's house taking a nap. After the ride we decided to check out the market that we saw while on the boat tour. It was really awesome and there were a ton of cool stands to look at. Lots of jewelry and pottery!

Us with all the daffodils behind us.

Once we left the market we went over to where all the nuns live in town to see thousands of daffodils that grow near their homes. There were so many, we also listened to a tour guide saying that they only were in bloom for about a week and we were lucky enough to see them. We then spend the rest of our time wandering and warming up in some of the shops, we thought it was going to be warmer then it was and did not bring appropriate clothing, but it didn't matter because we had a ton of fun! At the end of the day we got back on the train and headed home. Manon's dad picked us up at the train station and we went back to their house where he made us dinner, pasta and home made sauce, which I have to say rivals my families pasta sauce, sorry mom and dad. We then walked over to her moms house so I could meet her and check out Manon's other bedroom, which holds many memories of our senior year <3. Her mom is cool and it was great to get the chance to meet her.

SO MUCH STUFF!

We went back to her dad's house because we had to get ready for me to leave in the morning, basically wake up at 4 a.m. so I would make my 6:30 a.m. flight. Packing my bags was super fun with the amount of chocolate that I was bringing back. I basically wore all of the shirts I brought with me so I could fit everything into my backpack. There were also tons of stuff shoved into my pockets and I looked super fat. Haha. I woke up early and we went to the airport and said our sad good byes.

I had such a great time in Belgium and can't wait to back again!