My Dream Trip to Belgium

“If you don’t use your head, you’ll use your pocketbook.”
– Belgium Proverb

My purpose for this trip revolved around my love of belgian beer and Formula One. So, I drank a lot of beer that I loved and watched Ferrari take the win at my favorite track in the F1 calendar.

I don’t have very many friends, especially here in Virginia, so I asked my Mom and sister-in-law, Jen, to accompany me on this adventure of a lifetime. Side Note: My mother HATES flying; she gets anxiety and motion sickness, but she braved this 9 hour flight to spend time with me, and I thank her so much for that!

So we started the trip in Durbuy (pronounced: DUR-BOY). It was approximately 45 minutes from Spa, Belgium, in the Ardennes Mountains, and it was a beautiful small town, that the residents only spoke French (I feel like I should mention, not a single one of us 3 speak ANY french, zero, zilch, nada). They had some DELICIOUS Frites (Fries, and the French did nont invent them, the Belgs did), fried in duck fat and served piping hot! I also had a couple delicious beers to enhance the experience.

As aforementioned, we were in a location relatively close to Spa, as in Spa-Francorchaps Circuit, BELGIAN GRAND PRIX. Pure Heaven. IT WAS AMAZING. There isn’t enough words in the English language to describe how fantastic this place was. Spa is my favorite track, as well as some other peoples’, most notably my ex-boyfriend’s. I’ll be honest, I chose this track in 2019 because he broke my heart and I really wanted him to be jealous of SOMETHING in my life (preferrably something that would make him feel as much pain as possible, but whatevs), so I went to Spa. So, here we were, at this green, luscious, longest track in the F1 circuit, and FERRARI wins the race! (P.S. My favorite constructor is Ferrari, I didn’t know if that was obvious or not with all the capital letters.)

We made our way to Brussels for the rest of the trip, and boy, was it great. We stayed at the Hilton Grand Place (town center of Brussels) and I’m so glad we did. We were right off the square all the sites were easy to get to.

We took a day trip to Bruges and Gent. We did a walking tour of Bruges, with a very energetic Brugge, who really knew his stuff. His English was better than mine on some occasions!

Gent was more of a twilight stroll on our own. We wandered around folling a list of places from a blog online, and I can honestly say that it was the best way to see all of the old city on the canal. I recommend googling the story of how the Bruge bellfey Dragon ended up on Gent’s bellfey…

We stayed in Brussels the rest of the week (except for the day trip to The Netherlands), and we ate chocolate, drank belgian beer, and ate waffles and frites! My mom got a little annoyed with me, since all I wanted was fries, so I conceded and let them go to a real restaurant a time or two.

We made our way all over the city, including Atomium! This monstrous stucture was erected for the 1984 World Faire. Getting there was the first time my mom and Jen had been on a metro (subway, The T, etc)!

After a great week abroad we headed home. We flew Brussels Airways to Washington-Dulles, and I recommend you don’t! There was no air vents on the aircraft, and they were definitely needed. An entire group of people boarded right behind us, and they definitely didn’t know what deodorant was. BO Central! Not a highlight of the trip for sure.

Thanks for reading, folks! Keep an eye out for a post about Operation Market Garden during the liberation of Europe during World War II.

Until Next Time,

@LeaderofNerds,

-Jessica