Belgium

So, seeing as Beljen and Priscilla decided to visit me in Vancouver last summer, I returned the favour this April and visited them. YES. First time to continental Europe. Very exciting.

Once I'd left Edinburgh I arrived in the Charleroi airport and headed straight to Liège to stay with Beljen's family. In order of sightseeing tours, I went to Brussels with Beljen's sister Emily, Bruges, Durbuy (allegedly "the smallest city in the world" but I don't know how anyone can prove such a claim), and Liège with Priscilla. There are so many photos and I don't want to post all of them so I've filtered them as best as I can.

Belgian beer is so, so good. Tripel Karmeliet is a clean, sweet, delicious one and probably my favourite of the bunch.. Chimay Blue was flavourful and satisfying and even more so when you discover that it's 9% alcohol by volume. I enjoyed drinking Leffe because it was fun to say the name in a dirty French accent. And Kwak was definitely worth trying because of the completely ludicrous vessel it was served in.

The overall impression of Belgium is pretty much what I expected: pleasant, but not particularly exciting. Being in a foreign European country was pretty great, but getting robbed in the streets of Liège was decidedly not. Bruges and Brussels were very similar experiences and I feel I will get the landmarks mixed up unless I divide the photos into folders by city on my computer. Anyway.. here are the photos.

Edinburgh

I've been dreading this post because I know it's a big one but I guess I have to do it eventually because I'm going to Italy soon and I can't let the blog posts pile up.

Ryanair is the go-to airline for cheap flights but sometimes you have to make peculiar detours to get to the destinations you want. I finally managed to book a flight to Brussels to see Beljen and Priscilla in their home country but interestingly, the only flights available were through Edinburgh.

Edinburgh was great. I spent the day walking from one end of the city to the other, glimpsing the castle from the outside and going all the way to the top of Arthur's Seat, the sheer cliff that looms in the distance when you stand on the castle. I ate haggis (twice) and had some powerful Scottish beer that I can't say I'm too fond of, but it was an experience. I met these two Swiss girls on the top of the hill and made friends with them for the day, they were good fun and it made the day a lot less lonely, despite being surrounded by people with hilarious accents. I also met a couple Canadians in a graveyard and had a brief chat with them (directions on how to get to the castle, mainly).

Basically I'm just glad that the weather was so good. Hot and sunny with a few clouds to make the photos slightly more dramatic. It was windy as hell at Arthur's Seat (wow, no joke intended there, but that's too good not to acknowledge). Belgium photos will appear soon, I don't like to make blogging into a chore.