Brussels | Amsterdam | Prague: Where it's great food, great friends, great fun....

From doing mucho traveling, I have learned how exhausting it really is. When we were planning our trips way back in the day, we decided to be ambitious and take up 3 countries in 6 days. We had off from class last Thursday and this Monday due to a holiday here in Andalucia so we wanted to take advantage of every free moment. Leading up to this trip, I had regrets. Three countries!? Was that really necessary? Well, God am I glad that we did. We were in Brussels less than 24 hours, Amsterdam about two days, and Prague for two. The trip was absolutely perfect. Everything kept falling into place just the way we had planned. Planes, trains, and automobiles were all on time, hostels/hotels fairly decent, great food, great friends, great fun.

Brussels:

We started off our trip taking a plane from Sevilla to Brussels on Wednesday afternoon after class. The weather was 72 and sunny in Sevilla, and we were leaving for very cold cities. We were so dumb. But, we put our scarves on, grabbed our gloves, and headed for the rainy city of Brussels.

The space requirements for a bag are VERY small. Six days, one backpack… I’m a woman. Somehow, it all fit in my bag perfectly. As we got closer to the gate, we could see lots of people ripping clothes out of their bags, re-closing their bags, and shoving their thinner suitcase into the bin to check the size. It was pretty amusing watching people struggle and throwing more layers on their bodies. All of us breezed on through luckily without having to check our bag sizes.

We flew Ryanair, a company famous for really cheap flights. We walked to the plane as it was sunset in Sevilla. Bye bye, beautiful city.

It was a 2 ½ hour flight to Brussels, and Carolina and I were sitting next to each other. She passed out with her head her in hands on her tray. I passed out on my arms. I woke up to find, both of my hands completely dead. I thought the blood was never going to get back into them! The lovey-dovey couple next to us was giggling the entire plane ride at us. I guess American’s are always the entertainment to Europeans. I looked at my watch and realized barely any time had passed. I made sure I wasn’t crazy by checking Carolina’s watch as well. Why was time moving so slowly!? Well our boredom quickly went away as the flight attendant came on the speaker. He says, out of no where, “Here’s an interesting fact: If you look out to the left… you will see… absolutely… nothing.” We died of laughter. Maybe it doesn’t sound funny, but in all of that boringness…. It was hysterical. Only a few people laughed. Then in Spanish, the same thing. I hear “a la izqierda” (left)…. Absolutamente…. NADA!” and the plane went WILD!! It was so cool understanding both and listening to see who knew English and who knew Spanish. I think we have repeated that sentence a hundred times on our trip. It’s never going to get old…

So we landed in a city “MUY, MUY, FRIO” as the flight attendant warned us. It was very, very cold. Great. We learned that Charleroi is not exactly in Brussels so we had to take a bus there. Somehow we rallied up a woman, and a nice couple from Norway and the eight of us took a cab for the same price, and it got us there faster… the guy even drove us to our hotel! Such a sweet deal. We were a little afraid at first, but I was using my head, and I thought it was legitimate. It all worked out really well.

We checked into the Sleep Well Youth Hostel. It had good ratings so how bad could it be? Since we were five people we had to split up into three and two. The rooms were clean, and the beds were rock solid. Eh, whatever.

We quickly headed towards the city center for dinner. It was late, not too many people out, but some waiter lured us into his restaurant. Funny thing is, later on my map there were suggestions of places to eat and that restaurant was on it! For 10 Euro we had a two-course meal, bread and a glass of wine. Just the way we like it. I couldn’t decide what I wanted so I asked the waiter what’s the best. He said mussels. I said sold.

Appetizers came out. Carolina, Jordyn, and Marissa all got tomato soup. Kelly and myself got shrimp scampi. Stupid choice. Three shrimp that needed to be completely peeled is not fun when you’re starving. It was really good, but too much work for my hungry stomach. I think I licked the plate.

Then dinner came. I just love it when everyone at the table “ooohs and ahhs” when my food arrives. Picking the right dish is the best feeling. Seeing someone’s dish and thinking, “I should have gotten that” is the worst. Well, I picked right. The broth was white wine based, had celery, onions, and other things of that nature inside. I decided to do all of the work first so I could just enjoy the meal. I had a great workout from picking out those suckers. The mussels came with fries so I just dumped those babies right into the broth and enjoyed every last drop.

After dinner we headed to Delirium, a famous bar right around the corner from the restaurant. It has over 2000 beers. Me, a non-beer lover, had to get something so I went for a light beer on tap. The guy working there suggested a fruit beer… they had a few. Marissa chose apple and I thought hey, why not. Deliciousssss!! Okay, it was a chicks drink, but whatever, I enjoyed my 3 Euro beer very much.

Smoke was everywhere; it was very different than the bars in Spain. We headed upstairs to another floor of the bar and sat in a booth. Out of nowhere, two Italian guys sit down with us. One guy, crazy, the other guy, gay? Crazy guy became obsessed with Kelly and became further obsessed when she said she was Italian. Crazy guy leans over the table and licks her face!!!! We are all sitting there thinking what the fuck is going on while laughing and crying at the same time. Crazy guy finally left. I pick pocketed his map from his jeans. I was proud of myself. Good luck to you buddy without a map. I felt accomplished ha.

We headed back to the hostel to sleep. I need some weight on my legs when I sleep (I cannot just sleep with a sheet) so I put the gross blanket over the sheet not letting it touch my body. So with being paranoid that it would touch me, and sleeping on a rock hard bed with an awkwardly shaped pillow, there was no hope for a good night’s sleep. I woke up at 4 AM to pee and accidentally turned on the light to the entire room. Marissa woke up and said, ‘Is it time to get up?’ Ha, not even close.

The next day we headed downstairs to breakfast. There were the usual things like toast and butter, but then there was cous cous and vegetables as well. Let me change that, nasty cous cous and nasty vegetables. I stuck to toast. Someone grabbed some peanut butter… a food that is not popular in Spain, but we surprisingly found it was not peanut butter.. it’s something called Speculoos. Imagine, consistency of peanut butter, but it tastes like a teddy graham. One of the most satisfying tastes of all time… just the right amount of sugar. We all grabbed a few little cups and took it with us on the rest of our journey.

We walked around the Grand Place (center square), St. Katrien (another part of the center with a very old church), and slowly made our way to the Manneken Pis (a famous landmark in Brussels) also known to us as Pee Boy.

Pee Boy was disappointing, as did I know that was going to be my reaction. The legend behind Pee Boy is that there was a big town fire and Pee Boy came to the rescue and put out the fire with his pee saving the town. Who really knows…Well, I mom danced in front of him, got ourselves some legit Belgium waffles, and headed towards our next destination. Oh and we met American students studying in Sevilla. Yep, small world.

Jordyn finishing off her waffle. She had chocolate EVERYWHERE

Walking back to the hostel we came across across an amazing artist painting on the street. 

I would have bough all of it if I could...

We got on the trade an hour early heading to Amsterdam. It was a somewhat long train ride, 3 hours so we needed seats, but there were none! So what did we do, sat in first class. I knew the ticket guy would be around and kick us out, but sometimes you just gotta live it up. We all passed out within 20 seconds of putting our heads against the window. An hour later, ticket guy was standing next to me. He asked for my ticket so I put on a little act. I took my time finding my ticket, acting dazed and confused, tired and dumb, and handed him my ticket saying, “Amsterdam right?” Duh, obviously. He says in a very nice way, yes, and that this is first class and I don’t have a first class ticket. “This is first class? Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I really had no idea. First time on the train.” He said it’s not a problem at all, the red seats are first class, blue, normal people. He said it was 70 E more for a first class ticket so I calmly giggled, smiled, and said no thanks and grabbed my friends and headed towards the baby screaming, non suit wearing, smelly section of the train. I felt like I was rowing the boat with the other slaves. We had to walk through a million people to finally find seats. Kelly and I grabbed two and talked the rest of the way.

Right before reaching Brussels, five British girls got on the train aka… the Spice Girls. They immediately starting talking to us talking about all of the cool places we should go in Amsterdam and what not. I wish you could hear my impression, it’s honestly pretty good ;)

**Food side note: 1) Small sandwich from cute cafe made up of goat cheese, fig, and nut spread, Italian ham and watercress 2) Open faced brie, pear, honey, and walnut sandwich. TO DIE FOR!

Amsterdam:

We got off the train to find ourselves in an extremely damp and foggy city. I realized I left my newly purchased 5 Euro earrings and 5 Euro umbrella on the train. Ugh, so dumb of me! I never do stupid shit like that. I put it behind me because Map Lady needed to get us to the hotel. I found out we need to take the 1, 2, or 7 tram to Leidesplein which is a really busy, happening, part of Amsterdam.

We didn’t really know how the tram worked so we just hopped on the back without paying. We didn’t even realize you had to pay. I don’t know… it was confusing. The conductor didn’t even realize so we just headed to Leidesplein on a free journey.

** Sidenote: We didn’t pay for a single tram in Amsterdam or Prague. We beat the system.

Leidesplain was hopping! Bars, cafes, people, everywhere. The fog made the city look really interesting with all of the bright lights that lined the buildings. We found out our hotel was right around the corner. Hotel de Paris, not too bad. I read that the front desk guy is a bit of a jack ass, so I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t say a single word while checking me in. Again, two rooms. I specifically bought the three person room and found 4 beds to be in the room. That frustrated me because we totally could have all slept in one room, but when it comes to my credit card, and sneaking people in to a foreign hotel, that’s just not going to fly with me. So oh well, an extra bed. Our non smoking room reeked of cigarette smoke, but it was fine.

We dropped our stuff and hiked far to this restaurant that Jordyn’s friend raved about. Now, in Holland, the streets have crazy names. The language is crazy. Kruzelsteinaestratt, Regulastentstratt, Heigenfartenfat, Lemongrassenswarstratt… I swear, every single street was like that. This was my toughest map yet. We got to the restaurant to find that we were too late for dinner. We were about to turn around when a man standing outside of the restaurant said, ‘Girls, people your age head that way.” And pointed towards the other direction. Just a few streets ahead was a really cool area with restaurants and clubs. We walked into a little Italian place for dinner. We didn’t care how it tasted, we just needed something. It sucked. That’s all I’ll say, but we headed home after that. I might as well list the things we did in Amsterdam because this blog will take me 9 years to write and it’s Amsterdam, leave it up to your imagination.

Anne Frank Museum

Red Light District

I Amsterdam sign

Flea Market

Great stores, great food

CHEESE SHOP!!

I found an awesome cheese shop that had over 30 samples out. I was the happiest girl in the world! Oh and we discovered this cookie that looks like a thin waffle that has a sugary syrup/caramel inside. They were the most delicious things I have ever had. We bought many… Ah, Stroop Waffles. Marissa just reminded me that’s what it’s called.

We spent the perfect amount of time in Amsterdam. We saw everything we needed to. The town was really way more beautiful than I had ever expected. Each street has a river running through it. Street, river, street, river… And, all of the houses are apartment style and some you walk down into so when you’re walking on the street, you can look right into people’s houses. They were all so modern, clean, and chic. I felt like I was in a movie. You know those movies where there’s a sad little boy, who doesn’t have a family or is lost and is looking into people’s windows, looking sad, putting his hand up, wanting his family.. and then moves on to another house and another and another. Well that’s what that was like… without the sadness of course. All of these perfect looking families, eating dinner, it was kind of precious. Everyone rides their bike, which leads me to Kelly getting hit by one!! Not funny, but actually really funny to all of us. This guy was so mad at her. She bounced off the pavement. It was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. She took it like a champ and laughed it off after imitating him screaming at her to all of us. Ah, so funny.

Oh also, I ran into a Penn Stater in this cute café. I had no idea she was studying abroad there. We had chicken and avocado sandwiches. Pure happiness J


**Food sidenote: We went back to that restaurant that Jordyn's friend told us about. We had brie, creme brulee style... GENIUS! Now I understand all of that Michelin stars...

Prague:

At the airport we needed to exchange some money. Why we thought 20 Euro was enough, who knows. So for 20 Euro you get back 400 crowns. Oh crowns, I had no idea that was the name so I decided to call the currency “shnoogles” and guess what, it stuck. We referred to shnoogles as shnoogles so much that it became second nature; it wasn’t even funny anymore. Dinner went like this, “Okay well you need to put in 80 more shnoogles, because I just put in 150 shnoogles and with tax we just need more so everyone put in 60 more shnoogs….” We even abbreviated it..

Anyway, our taxi driver told us everything we needed to know about the city and dropped us off in the middle of bum fuck at our hotel. It looked like a scary area. We hopped out and got inside quick. We checked into our little apartment, threw our bags down, got a metro ticket from the front desk, and headed towards the center. We were in New Town which has all of the fancy stores that every city has. We passed a sausage vendor and knew that we were going to have to try one of those so why not now. Kelly, Carolina, and I enjoyed our dinner happily as we walked to a restaurant for Jordyn and Marissa. The crunch of the skin of the sausage was killing Marissa, completely understandable. We went into the first restaurant we saw, a schwarma place, of course. We had our first Prague beer, Pilsner’s and went home to our warm room. Prague… was… freezing.

In the morning we got up early and headed downstairs for breakfast. Here it comes again, foreign breakfast. This time it was hot dogs and vegetable soup alongside yogurt and bread. Killing me…

We went straight to Old Town where we watched the Astronomical Clock go off on the hour and a man came out with his trumpet. The Astronomical clock is a huge clock tower that was designed way ahead of its time by a clock maker who managed to move all of the statues on the outside when the clock struck on the hour. It was so incredible that people would come from all over Europe to see it. When the clock guy decided he wanted to design something cooler or better or something like that, the people in power at the time didn’t want him to so they poked out his eyes! True story. So to get his revenge he jumped into the churning gears thus breaking the clock. It wasn’t for a hundred years that someone came along and fixed it so with it being broken, the head honcho people were reminded every day of their sin. So anyway, we stood there and waited for the clock thing to happen.

As we were standing there, something very strange was walking our way. One women, bronzed, dark hair, stick skinny was trying to sell us a huge jar and her friend was selling a skeleton! A camera crew was following them so we knew it was some stupid reality tv thing, but it was hilarious. She even went up to our tour guide trying to sell him the skeleton also, but he had no idea what was going on. PLEASE, see below.

So for 2 hours we toured around Prague, hearing the history, seeing all of the beautiful buildings. We also went around the Jewish quarter, passed by the oldest cemetery in Prague, and saw an old Spanish-Jewish synagogue. After the Jews were allowed to move out of the ghetto, it became a bad neighborhood because the poorest of the poor moved in and the criminals. To get rid of them, all of the buildings besides the extremely important ones were knocked down and built back up so the Jewish Quarter is relatively small, but still lots to see. There was a Holocaust memorial that had hundreds of pictures from children who lived and we were told to tell their story through paintings. We also learned about when Hitler’s right hand man was murdered by two people, Hitler had the towns of those two people burned down, killed all the men, put all of the women in concentration camps, and the kids were sent to be “Germanized.” Lovely.

Enough on Hitler… after that tour we went for lunch. I had some stewed pork and mashed potatoes… when in Rome right!? The others had some lasagna looking thing… can’t remember the name of it… but it was a really foreign name that I had heard of before.

Then we took the castle tour for three hours. It was a lot of touring, but with limited time in the city, we really needed to see it all as quickly as we could. Our tour guide was really awesome, we made friends with an older couple from New Zealand, and we got to try hot wine at a café in the middle of the tour. We also got to see the changing of the guards. I mom danced in front of one of them… he totally was smiling. I could see it. They definitely aren’t as serious as in England. These guys could move their eyes and what not. It was really hysterical though… I wonder what he was thinking!?

After the tour we headed to the John Lennon Wall. It’s a wall full of quotes from John Lennon and has been painted over by visitors from all over the wall adding their quotes, his lyrics, and their signatures. It was really cool. We attempted to take jumping photos, and had a little success…

On to dinner… one of the most classic things that happened on our trip. Okay, so here’s the play-by play. Carolina, Jordyn, and Marissa ordered soup with a side of bread dumplings. We were so, so , so, excited to eat these dumplings finally. Kelly and I order some sausage appetizer.. sliced meat with horseradish and mustard and we were splitting one of their restaurants specials… some kind of meat, with the dumplings as well. Well, food came out; their soup, our appetizer, a side of bread and our main dish. So Kelly and I dig into our appetizer and start spreading the horseradish and mustard onto the bread, placing the meat on top, and enjoying. Then we look at our other plate and don’t see any dumplings. We were very confused. After awhile, Jordyn and Marissa’s dumplings never came either. So we thought that maybe they forgot about it. So we called the waitress over who barely spoke English and asked. She then pointed to me. Me, head facing down, fork in my mouth… what were the dumplings? The bread that I had just put in my mouth. So Kelly and I actually ate their share and ours without even knowing it. Damn it! So then we ordered the potato dumplings, thinking, okay, we have to get this right. Well, these hockey puck looking and weighing things are now in front of us. I think the “dumpling” was so thick that it will line my stomach until next year. We laughed and laughed and definitely did not finish it. What a disappointment. Now, it came down to shnoogles. Oh the shnoogles.. the bill was like 800 shnoogles. You owe this, we owe this, you owe 50 more shnoogles… can you spot my 60 shnoogs and I’ll give you shnoogs tomorrow?…. something like that. 

bread dumpling... HA

shitty potato dumpling

After figuring that all out we crossed the Charles Bridge and wow, what a site to see. This was the moment that everyone talks about in Prague. This is where Prague gets the reputation of being the most beautiful city in Europe. It really was breathtaking. All around were beautiful buildings, Catherdrals, the castle grounds, everything. It was exquisite. My camera was having a hard time picking up the right light, but I did get a video of the violinist on the bridge. It couldn’t have gotten any more romantic. But, I didn’t need a man, because I had my best girls with me. Kelly shed a tear, Marissa took artsy photos, Jordyn was thinking about chocolate… ya know, the usual. I had that feeling of being a little girl going to Disney World for the first time again. Jordyn kept saying, “It’s like Disney World!” Well Jordyn, it’s because Disney is designed around places like this. Did you know the castle is designed after the one in Toledo, Spain though? Fun fact.

After oohing and ahhing for a while, we were back in the start of New Town, but came across a woman making a very special Prague pastry. She took dough, around a thick metal rod, dropped it in hot oil and then rolled it in coconut, almond, walnut, or cinnamon then took a spatula’s worth of Nutella and lined the inside. My girls were in Chocolate Heaven. I thought it was really good, they thought it was the best thing they had ever tasted. I gave them my last bite. They thought I was crazy. The differences in palates…

We all were on such a high for some reason. We started dancing in the streets (caught on film by Marissa Perrone) and laughed and sang. We found some sculpture guy sitting on a bench so we had to take a picture with “him.” Jordyn was picking his nose, very mature, we know. But, we had a BLAST!

The next day, Jordyn went to tour some more of the Jewish Quarter and the rest of us went to the market. Markets are the best, you find the cheapest and best gifts there. In every city I buy 5 Euro earrings so there in Prague it was 100 shnoogle earrings. I found the most beautiful bracelet. I had to get it. I asked how much. The man said a price and then lowered it and said “For you, 100.” Ah perfect, I don’t even need to bargain. After paying him he said to me in a pretty good accent, “I hope you have it forever.” How sweet is that! So it wasn’t earrings, but ehh, same difference.

I had 100 shnoogles left and no way was I going back to Sevilla with a dime. I walked around and there were so many unbelievable artists… all of them used water color. I saw a painting I wanted for 150, but told him I only had 100. “For you, no problem.” Ah, I love it.

I run into Marissa and she said that there was a really special bracelet she wanted, but it was 350 and no way does she want to spend that much. So I told her what I learned in Israel. You separate your money into whatever you are willing to pay. In this case, it was 200. So she had 200 ready to go to put on the act of “But sir, I only have 200.” And give a sad face or something. Well, I knew she really wanted it and the guy wasn’t giving any kind of hint to lowering the price even after we put on our whole act so I looked at him and said, “Sir, can you give it to us for 200, it’s all we have.” He thought about it for a second and said okay. She was so happy. Until we went to hand over the 200 and he said, “No, I said 300.” Uh ohhhh confusion. So I said, “Please sir, 200 are all we have. It’s our last day here.” After about 6 seconds of thinking, he smiled and said okay. Marissa lit up. I’ve never seen such a big smile. It was a really unique bracelet. I’m really glad I could help her out. That smile was so worth it.

Everything went so smoothly, too smoothly. We kept questioning how everything was falling into place so perfectly. Which leads me to the airport. Marissa and I booked through another company, not directly through Wizz Air because my computer kept saying it wasn’t a secure website so I refused to put my credit card info in. So we didn’t have a boarding pass until we got to the airport. I noticed we were standing on the wrong line, but thought let’s see what happens. Less than 15 seconds later I had my boarding pass. It was too simple! We then  looked to our right, and there was a really fresh salad bar! That’s gold to us. We grabbed a salad and headed for the plane.

Like many flights in Europe we have taken, we had to take a bus with all of the other passengers to the plane. We were flying to Madrid and literally every single person was a Spaniard. I already had started up a conversation with some people in front of us on line. They were speaking too fast for me. The older man said Sevilla is boring. We all laughed and argued back. But when we were on this little bus, everyone was shoved in, and when Spaniards are all together and are impatient, they get loud. The cheering, the laughter, the voices, it was hysterical. They all act like they know each other. They were shouting about their cities and the older man caught eyes with me and shouted “Sevilla!” for me. Marissa and I just looked at each other and smiled. We just love Spain so much.

We drove literally 2 feet to the plane. Everyone was facing towards the door, ready to run. Doors opened and a heard of Spanish elephants raced towards the plane. We were hysterically laughing. Spanish mama’s, they get what they want. And they push. Again, more laughing.

I managed to find Jordyn and Carolina in the back of the plane. These three douche bag men next to us stole the rest of our seats so we all sat separately, but we were so close to all sitting together, finally. These three men, let me tell you… they would not stop staring! I joke and say Carolina is my celebrity, because she is so gorgeous and everywhere we go heads turn. Well these three guys, wow oh wow. They couldn’t stop looking our way. Like, they weren’t even hiding it. So we made a sign that said “Te ayudamos?” which means, “Can we help you?” to get them off of our back. At one point we heard them take out their Ipod and play in English, “I want to do bad things to you…” This had to have been some kind of bachelor party. Too much testosterone surrounding us on the plane…

The trip wasn’t over yet though. We ran into our other friends and headed towards the Madrid bus station for our 6-hour ride home. I was dreading this. Carolina couldn’t get a bus ticket and was stranded. Luckily she has family in Madrid so she stayed with them for the night and headed home in the morning.

We dragged our asses to the bus and ventured home. After many stiff necks, sore backs, broken hips, swollen feet, and tired eyes, we were home in Sevilla. We arrived at 5:30 AM and everyone had class. I was lucky and had class at four in the afternoon, but everyone else dragged their butts to school two hours later.

The trip couldn’t have been any more successful and fun. It’s so funny to me how we really are grown up and can do everything on our own. Three planes, a train, a bus, many taxes, many trams, two hostels, one hotel, we did it all, and we did it all really well. I’m really thankful for where I am and being able to experience something like this. It only gets better from here. We rocked three countries in six days. Great food, great friends, great fun…