The one with a quick Brussels vacay

Monday and Tuesday were kind of strange days.  It was a mix of doing as much as we could in a small amount of time but kind of during off hours and in some cases doing things almost solely to fill time before travel.  Monday, as I mentioned, most of the museums were closed, so that didn't leave very many things for us to do.  We could have just walked around, but it was too cold for that.  After only a few minutes my hands and face were painfully freezing.  It just wasn't a good day for wandering outside, so after checking out the Royal palace in Dam Square we headed to the Amsterdam museum (the only open museum) to wander about, inside and safe from the cold.  It was an interesting enough museum, but nothing mind-blowing.  We saw an exhibit on the most famous football player from the Netherlands that was pretty interesting.  The rest was a walk through Amsterdam and Netherlands history, but because the museum wasn't very well laid out, it was difficult to follow.  One minute, we were walking through the 15th century, and the next the 19th century.  We watched a funny video about the Dutch Golden Age that was pretty entertaining.  I didn't realize until afterwards that it was meant for children, but that's okay.  

Afterwards, we headed to Melissa's office to drop off her passes.  Both Melissa and Marissa's Dad had suggested this one place for lunch, Singel 404, and so we decided to go there since it was close by and convenient.  It was a really cute little cafe, fairly similar to the one we ate at on Saturday.  Marissa and I both started with a cup of mint tea, a specialty of the Netherlands, probably stemming from the days of the trading company.  It is kind of funny because, as you can see, it is a lot like a mint salad just chilling in your cup with water.  It tastes really good though and is nice and warming on a cold day.  For lunch, I got a giant sandwich with grilled chicken, goat cheese, and chives.  It was humongous and one of the best things I had on the whole trip.  If you are ever in town, stop in for a bite.  It seems to always be crowded, but it is worth waiting a few minutes, for sure! After lunch, we picked up our luggage from the hotel and made our way to the bus station to head to Brussels.

We made it to Brussels with no complications and only struggled a little bit to figure out how to take the Metro to our hostel.  After a short break, we headed to city center to find somewhere for dinner.  Our hostel had given us a map with some fun site-seeing/food-finding advice, so we took it and headed to one of the recommended restaurants to grab a waffle.  Yes, our first course consisted of waffles with whipped cream and powdered sugar accompanied by cappuccinos, and it was DELICIOUS! Brussels was worth it for this alone.  Second course of dinner had us finding a fry shack to pick up some of the famous Belgian fries.  Let me just tell you, they are famous for a reason!  It is a good thing that I don't live in Belgium because I would not be able to resist picking up some of these every couple days! After dinner, we headed back to the hostel with plans to get up early the following morning to check out some of Brussels during the day.

We only had about three hours to site-see in the morning before we needed to pick up our luggage and catch a bus to the airport, but we tried to make it worthwhile.  First we headed to Grand Place, which was a lot like a plaza.  You can't really see it in the photo, but the buildings were trimmed in gold, which was pretty.  It was nice to see, but it was also COLD, so we weren't there long before we decided to find a cafe for a hot cup of coffee.  Refreshed from the warmth, we made our way to one of Amsterdam's famous peeing statues.   It was humorous enough, but the best part was the 1 euro waffle that we got right next to it.  Man, that thing was soooo scrumptious!  Our final stop was at the main Cathedral, which was nice, but no Sagrada Familia to be sure.  Mostly we were glad to go inside and get warm.  

A long couple of hours later we were taking off, headed back to Sevilla, where many of our adventures begin.  One of the strangest parts of the trip was the fact that on the flights, the swollen fingers on my hand ballooned up even more than usual.  Still no word on what is going on there.  Anyways, every time I go to a new city, I wonder to myself, okay, how does this rank compared to the other places you have been?  It is incredibly difficult to even begin to put them in any order.  I love them all for a variety of reasons, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Rome, Lisbon, Florence, Venice, Barcelona...you just can't make me pick!