On my way to Brusselss

Way back in June when I was visiting Louise at her workplace to get my remaining luggage we were having a chat about all the places I would be visiting on part 2 of my journey. She suggested that I visit her while she was back in Belgium for the summer holidays. I was a bit lost for plans after La Tomatina and decided that this would be a great idea!

Fast-forward 2.5 months and here I am in Brussels, day 1 of my adventure in Belgium. Now Louise is currently in Italy till Sunday, so I am exploring the north part of Belgium and will visit the south next week with her.

My itinerary this week goes as follows:

Tuesday – Arrive in Brussels, stay in Brussels

Wednesday – Overnight trip to Bruges

Thursday – arrive back in Brussels in late arvo, stay with Louise's friend

Friday – Brussels

Saturday – Brussels

Sunday – travel to Liege to meet Louise and her sister at 6pm

I had intended on visiting Ghent on Saturday, but decided that it wasn’t worth the transport and that I would visit it next week.

But I almost didn’t make it here! My journey to Belgium has not been smooth. I was taking the 6:15am RyanAir flight from Barcelona to Brussels. I had worked out the bus to catch with Alex and off I trod at 3am down to the bus stop. One good thing about the Spanish lifestyle is that there are always friendly people around in the wee hours of the morning.

Barcelona airport is massive and to reach Terminal 2, I had to get dropped off a some weird location and then catch a shuttle bus for 10 mins. When I finally go inside I managed to once again pick the line that didn’t move. I umed and ahed about changing, but feared that once I made the move my line would process faster.

Almost an hour I stood in that bloody queue to reach the front desk with 20 mins to spare before check-in closed to be told that I needed a Passport check – What!! There are no signs anywhere about this. So I quickly ran with all my luggage over to some random desk and waited a further 20 mins to have my passport checked.

I went back to the lady only to be told that check-in had now closed and I had to run upstairs to the gate and hope that they would let me luggage on. WTF!! Ryanair, how was this now my problem!

After leaving my ticket behind and having to run back, I ran up the stairs, pushed through security, loaded by 18kg checked baggage through the little vaerbelt, ran to what I thought was my gate, only to be told it was the next one along. I was one of the last people to get in the queue, the whole plane had practically boarded and I pleaded with the lady to let my bag go on.

She was a bit bemused, wanting to know if I’d slept in and arrived late. I protested that my line had not moved and I’d been here for an hour and a half. Then I thought better of it and decided not to argue with the lady who might not let my bag on. But as per usual there were loads of people who had to put their carryon luggage down below. So the guys just picked mine up with theirs and off it went.

Finally I was on and I got to see a beautiful sunrise over Barcelona as we took off. At least that is a great advantage to the early morning flight.

The flight landed and I bought what I thought was a train ticket to the centre; it was in fact a bus ticket instead. The lady at the counter told me how to get on the bus and off I went. Except when I got on the bus the driver told me they were heading to Luxemburg…. What?

She’d already stamped my ticket, so I sat down, thinking oh well if it only costs E4.50 to go to another country, I suppose that is fine. It’ll be an interesting day trip haha

As it turns out, there is an area in Brussels called Brussels-Luxemburg. It’s at the centre of the EU Parliament. The bus literally ended its journey here, so I got off and stepped into the first café I found to have a bagel, some tea and some wifi.

It was only 10am and already I’d been on some pretty epic adventures. My wifi said it was a 40 min walk to my hostel. I grabbed my bags and off I headed, walking the streets of Belgium, taking in the sights, and officially waving goodbye to winter. It was overcast, predicted to rain and 13 degrees. Hello Autumn.Baca lagi