Well, the title hides nothing. This weekend included my first encounter with bed bugs. However, this added a lot of excitement to our story and the weekend did include a lot of other exciting, positive experiences. We only stayed in Belgium for 1 night, as planned, but we did have a fun weekend! Let's start at the beginning...
On Friday at noon, all classes end. Since we were doing a short trip (one small city in Belgium: Bruges), we decided to stay in Luxembourg on Friday and do a MUDEC organized activity, a Discovery Tour! This week included a trip to the case mates and the Chocolate House - all funds covered by the university. We decided to participate as a way to become more familiar with the city. Also free Chocolate House,
pas mal.
When we got to the casemates, they were CLOSED! We're not sure why, especially because the leader of our group had just verified that they would be open for us! We took some pictures from the view and climbed around a bit, but them decided to escape into the warmth of Chocolate House, where we shared some chocolate mousse cake.
Looking down from the casemates!
Afterwards, we needed to go to the city Cactus to get groceries for dinner/Saturday lunch and to find another converter for me. Since I like to have my computer always plugged in, it's hard to charge other devices. More of an "extra" than a necessity but we decided to look.
In the end we got all of the things we needed except the converter. The city Cactus doesn't carry them! Domage! However, once again we found how lovely and helpful Cactus employees are, and came away from the experience very pleased and not discouraged. They were also very helpful in setting up rewards cards for us so we can get coupons and have permanent online receipts of all we buy over the next 3-4 months. Sort of like our CVS cards at home.
Friday evening I cooked more chicken breasts, which turned into Alex's packed lunch for Saturday (last week in Paris we got a better idea of how much food we needed to have on hand to make sure he didn't get malnourished or cranky...
He also got a fresh baguette from the Cactus boulangerie. I packed a salad with hard boiled egg, dried cranberries, apple, and olive oil. I really enjoy preparing my own food, plus that way I know I'll have something I like!
Our train departed for Brussels at 7:20. The trip there had FIFTEEN stops! It took about 3-4 hours and then we had a short layover and popped on a train to Bruges, about one more hour.
I have to say, right away I got a sort of negative impression of the Flemish. They seemed a little cold and grumpy. Later on I realized that I judged too soon.
French was common in Brussels, but in Bruges we only heard Flemish. This made it a little bit intimidating as well... Though everyone supposedly spoke French (and English!) it was strange being somewhere that we felt cut off from communication more than before.
Posed with a giant Toblerone in our Brussels layover...
Belgium instantly surrounds you with lots of chocolate as soon as you're off the train!
The first thing we did when we left the train station was walk towards two giant towers; one cathedral, and one we hoped was the Belfry for us to climb up. As we walked we marveled at how preserved Bruges is... It's tiny but ALL cobblestones and old buildings. I immediately fell in love with the canal that winds throughout the city.
We knew it as soon as we entered the heart of the touristy part of the city. Our sense were assuaged by the sight of endless chocolate shops and waffle restaurants, the sounds of horse carriages galloping down the cobblestones, and the smells of Belgian fries wafting out of cafés. We found the Church of Our Lady (home of Michelangelo's Madonna and Child, which I wanted to see after studying it in art history), but preferred to first wander the street with shops and cafés.
We eventually stumbled on the Markt square, which is surrounded by high end shopping (reminiscent of the Champs Élysées), and more chocolate shops (which were never out of sight). We found "The Chocolate Line," which is a shop that I'd read about when planning the weekend. We popped in there and I decided to make my first chocolate purchase. I chose a simple chocolate praline bar, which I ate a bit of. It was good but not AMAZING. We moved on in search of waffles and fries for Alex.
We came across both, eventually. He was unimpressed by BOTH!
Waffle Alex picked (he likes bananas/chocolate)
We paid 6€ to climb the Belfry tower. Climbing it (366 steps) was terrifying (bad vertigo) and also sort of like Tackle the Tower. The staircase was verrrry narrow and steep and winding. The view on the top, though, was extremely worth it.
Next we saw Michelangelo's Madonna and Child in Church of Our Lady.
Afterwards we looked for Chez Vincent for some "real Belgian fries." When we finally found it, it was "fermé"!!!! Just for this week, too. We were disappointed, but found another reasonable restaurant and decided to check into our hostel before eating.
Our first impression of Hostel de Passage: very nice.
We went to dinner, where we realized it was affordable but maybe a little "mature" of scene for us. We were the youngest in there and felt a little out of place but carried on anyways. The food was decent so we were happy.
We went back to the hostel and decided to take a nap before possibly going dancing later in the evening. We'd been going since before 6AM and were exhausted. We both conked right out. I wore my coat to bed because I was freezing.
I woke up about 2 hours later with an unusual feeling of anxiety and claustrophobia. And itchiness. I was distinctly itchy. I lay there for a minute and then sat up.
Bugs. I saw bugs.
I screamed/yelled this at Alex, who woke right up. We both weren't sure what to do, so we evacuated the room and phoned our moms. Thank goodness for moms.
Alex ended up phoning the hostel owner, who was at home on bed (it was 11PM). We wanted plastic bags and help finding a new hotel. He wasn't very interested in coming back and helping us so I got on the phone with him and got very forceful. I was in an extremely unhappy state, which was worsened when I heard that he wasn't being helpful. I think men respond well to angry women because it reminds them of their mom yelling at them. Good thing I had all that practice at work over the summer (the description of that job on my resume is pretty much: "getting people to do things they do not want to do"). He showed up in 10 minutes.
He didn't much want to refund us or help is find a new hotel. He brought plastic bags, so we bundled our stuff right up. He eventually found us a new, real hotel and escorted us over. He paid us back our money (not our deposit) and gave us 20€ towards our new hotel, The Golden Tree, which was possibly the fanciest I'd been in ever.
Fancy breakfast room at the fancy hotel
We checked in and the lady at reception was extremely kind. She gave us a 10€ discount because we looked "so young," and free breakfast. She gave us directions to the laundromat for the morning, too.
We inspected the new room for bugs and when we saw the coast was clear, we were quickly asleep (about 2 AM).
In the morning we had breakfast and bundled our contaminated things off to the laundry. A very kind taxi driver took us, by way of stopping at the bedbug hostel to get Alex's forgotten glasses. We had consulted a family friend of Alex's who is a bed but expert (as her job, thank goodness for her!). She said that simply putting the contaminated things in the dryer would suffice, so that's what we did. About 10 minutes in I realized I'd left my credit card in my pocket... We paused the machine to pull it out and it was totally melted! I guess the machine was hot enough, and we left the clothes in for awhile so we should be safe.
Next we had to go back to the nice hotel to get my forgotten watch... We both need to stop forgetting stuff!
At about noon we were ready to explore more. We stopped in many chocolate shops. We didn't do a chocolate crawl exactly but I stocked up on lots to save for bad days... Alex even tried some truffles and he approved!
We had a nice lunch in Tearoom Carpe Diem and the had to head off to find the train station again!
I had chocolate tea, which didn't taste very chocolatey but was still very good.
Heart-shaped sugar
I plan to add more pictures and anecdotes as I think of them tomorrow - this is just the general gist of the trip! I'm happy to say that Bruges was not in fact, completely over-powered by the bed bug experience - that was really just our night and we still had 2 days of fun exploring Bruges. On the plus side I think we learned a good travel lessen and escaped without too much damage. We learned how to handle business with uncooperative hostel managers, too. Regardless, I definitely think Bruges is a "one and done" type of place because it's so small, but it was one of my favorite little places so far.
Tomorrow will hopefully include sleeping in until 8 and then maybe a run in the park! And some homework!
