Skip to main content

Adventures in Tourism: Belgium and Paris

A beautiful field in Bruges, Belgium
Hello!

A few weeks ago, my program went on an excursion to Belgium. It was an amazing and adventurous weekend, but I returned needing to recover. In the meantime, exhaustion, procrastination, depression, and technical difficulties have conspired to prevent me from posting. Fortunately, things are better now, so I have returned to tell you about my weekend as a tourist.

Smiling in front of the Eiffel Tower as though I built it myself

Before leaving for Belgium, I spent a Friday afternoon seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe with my friends. (Yes, it took me over a month in Paris to go and see the Eiffel Tower.) To top off our afternoon of tourism, we went to a macaron restaurant called Ladurée, and consumed delicious macarons and tea.

One of my friends captured this image of me imitating a tourist seeing the Arc de Triomphe for the first time.

On Saturday, March 9, we left early in the morning for Belgium. We arrived in Ghent around 12:30 PM and scrambled to eat lunch before our walking tour. Paris can feel a little stifling sometimes, and Ghent felt like a breath of fresh air. The tour guide had many interesting stories about the historical places that we got to see. Pedestrians and vehicles occupy the same road, so our group often had to move to accommodate a car or bike.
This is the original Ghent house of guilds. During medieval times, a wall was built that inadvertently blocked the guild house. At some point, people found the plans for this guild house, assumed that it had been demolished, and rebuilt it. Several years later, a medieval wall was demolished and the original guild house was rediscovered.

This sculpture is on the former jail of Ghent. It recounts the story of a man who was sentenced to prison without food or water, and survived by being breastfed by his adult daughter.

This statue's sword was stolen by a university student. It took several years for anyone to realise that the sword was gone, but they replaced it and launched an investigation once they did. The university student panicked and abandoned the sword in an alley. Now, the statue has two swords.

After our tour of Ghent, we drove to Melles and toured the Delirium Brewery. This brewery prides itself on its sustainability, and its beers have received many accolades.

We then drove to Bruges, where we stayed at a nice hotel. In the morning, we went on a chocolate and historic tour of Bruges. I loved the nature and delicious chocolates, and bought a few bars of chocolate to bring home with me.


A delicious Belgian waffle

Overall, it was an enjoyable trip. Bruges and Ghent are both in the Flemish part of Belgium, which unfortunately quelled any dreams of moving there one day since I don't speak a word of Flemish. However, I was happy to find that the people there are very friendly and often speak English. I have been looking at pictures and missing my trip ever since.

Anyway, let's hope for happier days and more blog posts (possibly some non-study abroad ones) in the future.

Best wishes,
Lydia

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Grouchiest Blog Post

Hello! This post is literally just Grumpy Lydia complaining. If that sounds miserable, congratulations! You have my full permission to click away now. If that sounds like something you wouldn't mind reading, please enjoy and/or suffer through this list of Lydia's Miseries. I was on vacation in Italy all last week, which means that there are many lingering tasks that have not been completed. My flight was delayed on Monday, which means that I missed class, which has led to me being even more behind.  Housing selection was yesterday, and I am trying to force myself to come to terms with the fact that I'm pretty much definitely going to be living alone next year, which will contribute to my depression next year and makes me feel lonely in the present. There are just, like, a lot of lingering thoughts that I cannot find the words to write about.  It is cold and wet and sad outside, which means that a Self-Imposed Walk to Help With Lingering Sadness would probably jus...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reviewing My August 2019 Goals

This is an image of my desk during Fall Semester 2018. On the right side of the photo, there is a vintage Singer sewing machine which, unfortunately, does not work. To the left of the sewing machine, there is a crate books inside. On top of the crate, there is a stack of Rookie Yearbooks with a crocheted jellyfish (wearing glasses) on top of it, and a picture frame containing a print that reads "all the time". To the left of the crate, there are a few more books. In lieu of a proper bookend, I have placed a tarot deck (stored in a black makeup bag) and a book-themed Halloween decoration (featuring book spines with the words "Potions", "Hexes", and "Spells") to keep my books from toppling over. I chose this photograph because, unlike my current desk, this desk looks like it belongs to someone who creates monthly goals. Hello! At the start of this month, I made a list of goals. As September 1 draws near, I am l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Media Round-Up: August 8, 2019

Image of pink, green, and light purple umbrellas suspended in the air between two buildings. Hello! Even with posting on my blog every day this month, I still spend significantly more time consuming content than I do creating it. With that in mind, here is a little roundup of some of the content I have been enjoying in this post-camp-pre-semester portion of my life. TV Show Superstore is a character-driven series about the employees of Cloud 9 (a thinly-concealed stand-in for Walmart). After watching America Ferrera in Ugly Betty and Ben Feldman in Drop Dead Diva , it is interesting to watch them in entirely different roles. Watching this show makes going to Walmart feel like a visit to a fully-immersive Superstore theme park. The between-scene cuts to bizarre antics happening at the store are one of my favorite little touches. Music I have been almost exclusively listening to Heathers . Somehow, I have become thoroughly desensitized to the fact that I am listening to a m...
Post a Comment
Read more