BRUXELLES

since we had such a long weekend over memorial day we decided to fly to Brussels Belgium! Actually we didn't have that long, but we are kind of crazy!! We were trying to find someplace to go and were thinking Mexico but all the flights were full so for fun Ryan looked up Europe and what do you know it was pretty open! Sunday morning we flew to Atlanta then on to Belgium. From Atlanta we flew business class!! I couldn't help just laughing as we took our recliner seats and the stewardess handed us menu's! It was amazing!! Ryan had to keep telling me to be quiet so people didn't think it was our first time, but pretty much everyone else in business class was older I am sure they didn't think we always flew business class. The flight was 9 hours so we definitely appreciated the nice seats! We ate lots of good food got to watch tv or movies or listen to music on our own little screens. They even gave us a little pack with socks and an eye mask, lotion, earplugs, toothbruth, toothpaste. I felt spoiled, but I liked it a lot. we got to Brussels at 8 am Monday morning and spent the day walking around looking at cathedrals and other buildings. It is a very dirty city and really you could do it in a few hours it is not a big city for touristy things. We even checked into our hostel at 1 and took a 6 hour nap, we were exhausted and then got up and went out again!! We really lucked out in the hostel there were only 2 other people in our room and guy from Ireland who was nice and could not get over the fact that we went to Europe for a day; and then a girl from France who didn't speak english. They weren't partiers like the other people in the hostel we could hear drinking and laughing. So it was nice. The weather was perfect not hot or cold and it didn't even raid, although it was humid and my hair doesn't do too well in humidity, oh well. Now I will show you some pics.




Here are some pictures of the Cathedral we went into, I don't know what it is called.







I thought the organ was pretty cool and the stained glass windows, very beautiful!
The next pictures are of the Grand' Place-Grote Markt,







I know you have all been waiting for these pictures: the famous Manneken Pis Yes they even dress him up for holidays and things. One story goes that a father was missing his child and made a declaration to the city that when he found him he would build a statue of him, doing whatever it was that he was doing. Thus, a statue of a litle boy peeing was created. The statue is also thought to represent the "irreverent spirit" of Brussels




we also found a statue of a little girl peeing. I am not sure of the significance of this statue. But is was down a remote alley the only reason we found it was because a tour group was there looking at it. But they spoke a different language and the the signs were in either french or dutch
Belgium is famous for its chocolate and you can find shops ALL over the place the other pics are of another old church I thought looked cool, but I like that kind of stuff, and us out on the town.




The way home is always an adventure in itself! We flew out of Belgium at 10 am on Tues morning. So we showed up to the airport and hour early and go to check in and they are all stern with us and tell us we are so late, they are already boarding!! So we checked in fast, ran to security, ran to customs, and had to run down the airport to get on the plane! I was dying! Luckily they didn't give our sweet seats away. The flight was good the way back took 9 1/2 hours. We got into atlanta and were going to fly to cincinnati then to salt lake since atlanta to slc is impossible! When we checked the flight before we left Belgium it looked great. But when we got to the airport in atl. the flight had 100 people on standby! so we had to pay to get on the internet and find an alternate route home, Ryan and to work at UPS at 10 that night!! we found 2 possibilities one of which the gate agent wouldn't even book us on, the other to Albuquerque NM looked good and there was a flight that left for SLC 15 minutes after we landed. Luckily alb is a small airport and the next gate was right next to the one we came in on! and we made it home!! We got home stopped and ate and Ryan changed and went to work. So that concludes our spontaneous day trip to Belgium!