We spent the day walking around Brussels. This is my first visit to Brussels and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of people ask me before coming here on why I was visiting Brussels. It gave me the impression that it wasn’t a very nice city to visit. But I found a lot of charm to the city. It feels more like a city to live in than just a tourist stop. Of course there are a lot of tourists and this is the capital of the European Union but it is very walkable and clean city.

They have one of the most beautiful squares I have ever been to. The buildings are very large and renaissance architecture. I could spend a lot of time in the square just looking at the buildings and all of the people. We visited their famous statue of a little boy peeing on the way to the square. It amazes me how many people take a picture of a little statue. They actually dress the little boy in different costumes and today, he was wearing the soccer jersey from Barcelona. Yesterday, he was wearing the Tour de France yellow jersey. They are very excited here because the Tour starts in Brussels this year.

The first day in Belgium was spent by taking a train an hour to Bruges. We were going to drive there but since it was so hard to park in Brussels we decided to just take the train and not bother getting the car out.

Bruges is a very cute city. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It was a little rainy but not too bad. We took a boat trip on the canal which was very interesting. Our driver was very good at explaining his city and the history. They built the city before the canal was there and then they let the water in. Bruges also didn’t have any damage from the wars so the town is very old but everything is in very good shape. As with a lot of European cities, the houses used to be taxed based on the number of windows. Some of the houses still have the windows bricked over even though they don’t tax on windows anymore. Also, some of the houses will have a very small window at the top. Those windows were for pigeons to bring messages during the war.

Bruges is a great day trip option. The boat canal trip was fun and short. It was pretty impressive that they take the boat under some of the bridges. Some of the people had to duck to not hit their head. I don’t think I ever get bored walking by all the chocolate and waffle shops. I have never seen so many chocolate shops in one day!

I have split my sabbatical into two different trips. Now it is time for the four week Europe trip which will cover a little bit of Germany, Belgium and Portugal. We flew from Portland to Frankfurt through Iceland. We left Portland an hour late and eventually we missed our connection in Iceland. Lucky for us, the airline already booked us on other flights before we even landed. We would have to fly to London and then on to Frankfurt. The trip would take an additional 4 hours but it was no big deal.

Once we landed in Frankfurt, I got a text message that our luggage didn’t make it. We went to the service desk to report our luggage didn’t arrive but the person said they had information that it did. We were told that before we could file a report, we would have to go wait for all the luggage to be delivered before we could report our missing luggage. So we had to wait an additional 30 minutes for the board to say they were done unloading and then we filed our report. They said our luggage was still in Iceland but we could have it the next day. We arranged for our luggage to be delivered to our next hotel in Brussels, Belgium.

After a good night sleep at the hotel by the airport, we picked up our car and started driving west towards Brussels. Halfway between Frankfurt and Brussels is Cologne, Germany. I have some family friends that live near there and arranged to meet them at their son’s soccer game. We watched the soccer game and then headed into the city to see the cathedral and have some lunch at a typical German pub. We then drove to their house and watched the final Bundesliga match of the season and ate homemade cake. It was great to visit even if it was such a short time. It is hard to believe that I haven’t seen them since 2002.

We got back in the car for the second part of the drive which took a little longer than expected due to a freeway closure and then roads closed in Brussels. We made it here a bit before 10 PM so it was a very long day. Luckily our luggage arrived shortly after us so everything was good.