Location: Brussels, Belgium

Duration of Stay: A week

Peak of my holiday: This is weird but i enjoyed using the metro, train and tram to get to places. Getting lost and finding our way back is actually funny and interesting.

Pit of my holiday: I wasn’t feeling too well for some days which really affected my mood.

Hey Guys. My name is Sally and I’m currently on a Placement in France. At the beginning of March I took a trip to Brussels, Belgium for a week. It wasn’t a planned trip. The initial plan was to go to Paris with a friend of mine. We had been planning the trip for over 4 months to go to Paris. So I told her I would stop in Brussels (where she lives) for a couple of days before we head to to Paris.

Took a flight from Bordeaux, France to Brussels. There was little confusion at first because there are 2 airports in Brussels. I arrived at Brussels South Charleroi Airport which is a bit far and was not where i intended to arrive. My friend thought I was going to arrive at the other airport, but we sorted it out before i landed. I arrived in Belgium on Monday 7th of March in the morning. My friend came to pick me up and it was about 40mins to her house from the airport. Her house was very nice and her mum and sisters welcomed me openly.

Activities

7th March: Arrived in the afternoon. Immediately we went to a shopping mall near by, I did a “little” shopping 🙂 Then we had dinner and did some catch up. Headed back home later where her mum prepared some fruit salad 😉 I ate and went to bed

8th March: I decided to do a little site seeing. As usual, we had a long list but we could only do a few due to lack of planning well and spending unnecessary time playing around which is always fun tho. We first visited the Parc du cinquantenaire. Its just an arc which i think has a historical story. LOL. Just by the left of this arc is the Auto world (a car museum =7 euros to enter) and to the left is a plane/historical museum (5 euros). However the car museum only opens after every 2-4 years for a month. So i guess we were lucky. After walking around a little, we went to the city center for a quick snack at the waffle house then to the city center for a ‘little shopping’. We saw the grand place e walking around. It’s basically buildings filled with a lot of gold colours and very pretty. Later in the evening, after using countless metros and buses (we got lost many times but that’s one of the fun and good part of using local transportation). We found the Atomium. It is a big, tall thing with a lot of balls (14 euros). Each ball has something interesting in them.The top ball was a view of the whole city and some other cool stuffs to see. One of which was the mini Europe park which we couldn’t go to because it was closed :(. Lastly, we went back to the city center for dinner and a final sight seeing of the center and a garden.

Auto world

Atomium

View from the top of the Atomium

9th to 11th of March: went to Paris

12th of March: Last night in Brussels was really nice. We wanted to go back to the mini Europe resort but it was closed again 🙁 Anyway, we went to this Chinese and Japanese museum (it was closed too). But its worth a try to go there if you ever go to Brussels. The reason why there we closed is because we woke up really late and went there late. We ended the day with the day at an African restaurant.

When we were waiting for the tram to come, a group of school boys walked up to us and said ‘hi’ and were so excited. Apparently they are fascinated when they see people speak good english. LOL

13th March: My flight back to Bordeaux was really early. My friend and her mum drove me to the airport.

Advice

• The best time to go to Brussels is in July. There is going to be a very big festival apparently and its always fun. Also, transportation is a bit cheap and basically everything is cheaper in most European countries.
• You need at least 2 to 3 months to plan a well successful trip.
• Make sure you have enough money in your card and also cash at hand so as to not get stranded.
• Pay for the EU internet to have access to internet everywhere you go. Its around 5 euros for a day.
• Get accommodation that will make you feel safe and not just looking at the cheapest price (Although i didn’t get to pay because i stayed with a friend). Use booking.com or airbnb.com .