NEW BLOG SITE

Since blogger limits the amount of photos you can upload without paying extra...
I have moved all my past posts (including photos) to TUMBLR

http://chaselifecreatejoy.tumblr.com/
http://chaselifecreatejoy.tumblr.com/
http://chaselifecreatejoy.tumblr.com/
http://chaselifecreatejoy.tumblr.com/

Hopefully this works out better

Ut oh

I ran out of photo space on this blog ALREADY. Blogger sucks.
I'm trying to figure out some other way to blog with lots of photos... but nothing seems to be working

Bruges, Belgium

On Sunday April 2^nd, we went to Bruges, Belgium. I never realized how small Belgium was until I saw on a map that the 1 hour and 15 minute train ride (with multiple stops) brought us almost ½ way across the country. Bruges is the capital and largest city of West Flander, which is the Flemish region of Prague. In Brussels the major language is French but in Bruges it’s Dutch. It’s a canal based city and so its often called the Venice of the North. It was a really beautiful city.

One of the most interesting parts of Bruges was the Béguinage. Which, historically, is a small collection of buildings used by religious women. The beguines lived like regular nuns, but did not make the same binding vows that nuns normally made. Beguines usually made the vows of obedience and chastity, but not the vow of poverty. However, the story is a little different in Bruges. The Béguinage was a sanctuary where women could retreat from the crazy society in which they lived to follow a secure, useful and peaceful life without the need to take the vows of a Nun. They were free to go outside of the Beguinage and return to the outside world if they chose and they had the Freedom to choose for themselves. A lot of the women of Bruges who chose to join the Béguinage, simply didn’t want to be forced into marriage and didn’t want to lose their rights as women. Our tour guide said that it was basically a bunch of feminists who wanted to live with freedom and got the chance to all live together where no men were allowed to go, but they were still looked after by a head mistress.  They never had to take any vows and had no forced ties to the church. Pretty cool!

In the Church of Our Lady was the famous Madonna by Michelangelo, which is believed to be Michelangelo’s only sculpture to have left Italy within his lifetime.

We also visited the most famous part of Bruges, which was the Market Square. At the market square is the Belfry or the bell tower… where the ending of the movie In Bruges was filmed (which I thought was an awful movie).

We then went on a 10+ mile bike ride from Bruges to Damme (where the windmill was) to Bruges’ Medieval to a harbor and then all the way back to Bruges! We went to where the ocean used to be… it was strange to see a lighthouse just sitting in the middle of a country side because the ocean was miles away!

Everyone knows that Prague is known for beer because they consume the most beer per person than any country in the entire world! However, Belgium is known for their beer for a different reason. In Prague there aren't many beer choices and most the time the Czechs drink Pilsner (which is a Czech beer)... in Belgium you kind find HUNDREDS of different types of beer... each beer also has a distinctive glass in which you drink it out of. They are very proud of their craft beers and their different glasses. This one was called Kwak and when you reached the section with the ball... it made a noise which sounded like a KWAK! This is me when I got the kwak!

Brussels, Belgium

On Friday April 1^st, my 2 roommates Christine and Kelly and I, left Prague really early and arrived in Brussels, Belgium! The weather wasn’t the greatest and the day was overcast, but we made the best of it. Kelly had a friend from college who was studying abroad there so she showed us around the city.

Brussels was extremely different from Prague. The city made you feel like you were in a small cute town somewhere, some parts of the city reminded me a lot of Hoboken, NJ or Montclair, NJ. Brussels reminded me a lot more of home, which is why I think I liked it so much. In Prague, everything is extremely old, nothing can be developed, everything is larger scale and there is literally a castle or super old church or monument around every single corner. Brussels wasn’t like that, while it did have important old historical things here and there, the city was cuter with small little streets with cafes everywhere. The streets had restaurants with outside seating and little houses all lined up in a row. Rather than a city, Brussels felt more like a little town.

This is Sablon Square, which was one of my favorite parts of the city. It has little cafes, antique stores and chocolate shops.

This is the St. Gudule and St. Michael’s Cathedral, it started being built around 1226.

We decided to stop for coffee and tea at the top of the Museum of Musical Instruments. Although we didn’t go through the museum ourselves, it’s supposed to be really cool, plus the view from the top was beautiful!

After walking through the windy little streets, we came across Grand Place, or Brussels’ main square. We weren’t expecting it, it kind of popped out of no where! In the main square was the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) and the Maison du Roi (King’s house).

The best part of Brussels was the food: Macaroons, waffles, ice cream, French fries with 20 different sauce choices and Speculoos (it’s a type of cookie that tastes like Teddy Grahams, they are delicious… kind of like a cross between a graham cracker and cinnomin and ginger snaps?.. yum). We ate a lot of speculoos ice cream and tried to bring back jars (they take the cookie and create something with the consistency of peanut butter) with us on the plane… but they were confiscated by security. Between the 3 of us … we had 5 jars.

On Saturday we went to Bruges for a day trip with Kelly’s friend’s study abroad program, CIEE. So Sunday we were back to exploring Brussels more.

We went to the Atomium, which was built for the 1958 World’s Fair. Each ball has a different exhibit hall and the tubes connecting them house escalators. The top ball has a panoramic view, however, it’s a bit outside the city and so the view isn’t exactly of the main parts of Brussels. However, we decided not to pay the expensive fee to go inside and just looked at it from outside, which was cool by itself.

We came across a park called Parc du Cinquantenaire (French for Park of the Fiftieth Anniversary) or Jubelpark (Dutch for Jubilee Park)… the country speaks 2 different languages. The triumphal arch at the end of the park was planned for the National Exhibition of 1880 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the independent state of Belgium. The park was really beautiful and really green… and the speculoos ice cream on my waffle made it even better!

After that we found the Berlaymont aka the Berlaymonster… which houses the headquarters of the European Commission, which is the executive of the European Union.