Belgium

My friends Travis and Anh had planned a little Euro trip, it had started with a visit to Copenhagen and Malmö to visit me, and it was ending with a stop in Brussels before returning to Canada. As I had a red day (holiday) on Thursday,  I decided that I would fly to Brussels Wednesday after work.  The plan was to meet up with them Friday before returning to Sweden on Sunday night.   

 One of the many comic murals on the walls of Brussels.

After arriving in Brussels I checked into the same hostel I stayed in last time, and then met some friends in the common area, a couple of awesome Canadian girls and an Australian girl, all of whom are doing exchange in Europe.  We had a great night and ended up in Delirium enjoying a little absinth and I enjoyed a "Cookie Beer" .... which actually tasted like cookies.

The next morning I took off to Luxembourg (Blog Post Here), and after a night and most of the next day I headed back to Brussels to meet up with Anh and Travis.  They had booked us into a pretty nice hotel that they had a great deal on.  I met up with them in the afternoon and we headed out to have a couple drinks and chat about their Europe adventures. Afterwards we headed out for the night but ended up packing in fairly early, although we did manage to meet up with the french girls from Luxembourg.

 The Town Hall

The next day we did the free tour, ate lots of waffles, and a horrid burger, then went around town some before heading for a really nice dinner together.  I enjoyed the local mussels as well as some more of the tasty tasty Belgian beer.

A church on the edge of the canals.

Since Travis and Anh where leaving early I decided to go to Bruges for the day and explore the town.  It had an economic crash right at its peak.  As a result much of it was just left in the medieval style, as the money wasn't available to even demolish the old buildings.  The result is a medieval city that still exists today.  It also has some really nice canals.

Think I missed something?  Have suggestions where I should go next?  Sound off in the comments below!

More Pictures:

 Cathedral of St Micheal

 Anh, Travis, and I

 The view behind Anh, Travis, and I.

 Market in Bruges.

 The cloth market.

 One of the Canals in Bruges.

Luxembourg

I had planned to meet up Brussels with my friends Anh and Travis in before they went back to Canada.  Due to some poor planning on my part, I ended up with nowhere to stay in Brussels for a night.  I decided that the solution to this problem would be to go to Luxembourg and stay there for a night. (plus I could check off another country!)

The train goes from Brussels to Luxembourg every hour, so it is rather convenient.  There is only one hostel in Luxembourg, so it wasn't too hard to decide where to stay.   The hostel is a really big HI hostel and is in a great location, although the common area is perhaps not the best for meeting people.  The walk to the hostel took about 25 min from the train station, and is a lovely walk that winds along the bottom of the castle walls and the edge of the cliffs.  The views are really breathtaking, with a small river and a beautiful church as well.

After checking in at the hostel I went for a wander around the lower part of town.  The castle walls and the cliffs are really amazing, and offer a great vantage point to take pictures of the lower town.  After my wander I met two french girls, played a bit of pool, then we went out for dinner and some drinks.  We started out in search of some traditional food but eventually gave up and ate some "traditional" Luxembourgian Chinese food.  Unfortunately since it was May 1 most places seemed closed.  After dinner we ended in a really nice bar with live music called the liquid cafe.

The next morning at breakfast I met a Slovenian girl, and we spent the morning wandering and taking some pictures of the upper part of the town.  Luxembourg is really clean, and it's quite obvious that there is a lot of money spent on the city as all of the buildings are quite beautiful and expensive looking, despite it being a tiny little town.

After a final coffee, I wrote this while sitting on the train back Brussels!

Some pictures:(First ones with the new camera!)

 The Aqueduct next to my hostel (re purposed into a road)

 The view of the walls and the church.

 The Church and the little river.

 

The river with the footbridge and the castle walls.

 The amazing view from the castle walls.

 Proof I was in Luxembourg!

 Grand Dukes Palace (Guarded by day only)

The Flag!

Ireland

Me and my buddy Dominic had been discussing potential cities to meet up in ever since he had visited Malmö and Copenhagen.  We eventually decided that a trip to Dublin would be fun, so we bought tickets, and decided that his buddy Denis would be joining us.   I booked us into the same hostel that I had stayed in previously, when I had been in Dublin a few years ago, and we were good to go! 

I really love Dublin and just Ireland in general, the people are really friendly, the pubs are really good, and the beer is pretty cheap (especially compared with Scandinavia).  We all met up at the airport, because coincidentally all of our flights came in within about 15 min of each other.  After heading to town, we were immediately helped out by a nice guy who realized that we needed a point in the right direction, and helped us find our way.   After a quick check in at the hostel, we headed out for a few lovely pints of Guinness and to discuss our plans for the weekend.

We decided that we would do the usual free city tour, a pub crawl (me and Dominic had previously done the CPH pub crawl), a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, and a tour of the Jameson distillery, then we would finish up the weekend by watching Canada win gold in Olympic Men's hockey.  (I know we didn't know the outcome yet but I was sure!) 

The city tour was really great and we only got a couple of really light rains, for about 10 min each, which I'm always told to expect when in Dublin.  The city tour goes to a pub for lunch afterwards, and if you go I highly recommend going and getting a plate of food, it is 10 euros really well spent!  

The pub crawl featured lots of pubs with really good live bands and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  The next day was a bit of a recovery day so we took a walk down along the river to the Jameson distillery and did the tour before going across the river to the Guinness Storehouse.  The Storehouse features an amazing view of Dublin from their top floor where you can enjoy a pint of lovely Guinness.  While I was there some very nice Australian girl decided to give me her Guinness, and so I enjoyed two!  After all this we headed out, and decided that we would go to our favorite of the pubs from the pub crawl, wait for the pub crawlers and then join them for the last bar.  We had a chat with the barman, and he agreed that he would put the gold medal match on the TV's for us the next day.

The next day we were all heading home, so we packed our bags, headed to the bar that had agreed to show the gold medal game, and sat down to an Irish breakfast and a bit of hockey.  Dominic and Denis had to head out in the middle of the game for their flight, but I managed to catch our rather glorious win in an amazing pub in downtown Dublin before running for my bus, and then my flight home.

Some pictures from around Dublin:

 View from Dublin Castle. 

 One of the gates at Dublin Castle.

 View from Inside Dublin Castle.

 A cool sign in Temple Bar District.

 The Spire

 Dublin Castle

 Dublin Castle

Christ Church Cathedral

 Trinity College

 Keywest, an awesome band out playing music in the street.

 Denis, Dominic, and Me