Friday
Took the train from Paris Nord to Bruxelles Midi - One hour and 22 minutes...very easy. Once we got to Brussels, we took a cab from the train station to our Bed and Breakfast hotel, called "A Taste of Belgium". You can see the website here: A Taste of Belgium. Elise had been there before and it was so cheap! 25 euro a night per person. It was also ridiculously nice. The bedroom (we had one bedroom for the 4 of us) was three times the size of my apartment. It had a big TV and really comfy beds. The bathrooms were great too, marble counter tops, a rain shower.
The owner, Jean Marc, was great. It's required to have a beer with him each night. And he gets really nice, authentic Belgian beer. Each beer has its own glass too and you can't drink it from the wrong glass. The beers we had were all made in abbeys in Belgium and were great. I've never been that into beer but this was great. They also had a dog named Olga that we played with and an unbelievable kitchen where Jean Marc and his wife, Francoise, baked us homemade bread each morning. After having our beer with Jean Marc, we took a taxi to the Grand Place in the center of Brussels. There, Kristen was waiting to surprise Justin. It was very funny seeing them reunite and it was a great surprise. 
It was already around 9:30 so we got a quick dinner and walked around Brussels all night, going in and out of different bars and trying different beers. It is so much cheaper than Paris, which was a great change. We met so many people too. Some college girls from Brussels, a bunch of French guys visiting for the weekend, a crew of Irish people, and more. We made a lot of friends and saw some great bars. It was a nice change from the Paris bar scene where you don't really meet that many people. Then we took a cab back to the B&B because we had to get up early the next morning for Bruges!Saturday
Waking up around 8, we got ready pretty quickly and had our amazing breakfast with Jean Marc. He has all of these different spreads and jams for us to put on our bread. My favorite was called Speculoos. It looks like peanut butter but it tastes like gingerbread. It's amazing. Jean Marc gave me a jar to take home at the end of our stay! We took at 10:00 train to Bruges, which was really easy. It was only an hour and a half to get there. Bruges is near the coast of Belgium. It's an old trading town but a lot of the canals dried up and people left. Now they're main industry is tourism...because its pretty much the same layout as the 1400s when Bruges was very prosperous. Lots of the same buildings are still in tact, a ton of churches and abbeys and really cool streets. We wandered around for a while, climbed the bell tower to see the entire city, got fries and waffels in Maarkt Square, bought amazing chocolates (some of which were in the shape of boobs, very funny), and just enjoyed the winding roads and beautiful gardens of Bruges.
In the afternoon, we went to De Halve Maan Brewery for a tour. This is the beer that has won the World Beer Cup the past two years and its made in Bruges. De Halve Maan. It was a really funny tour, going over the history of the brewery and the process of making beer. They kept trying to convince us that beer was healthy for us. They even have advertisements from the '50's, signed by doctors, that say "instead of eating meals, you should just drink beer. You'll get all the nutrients you need!" After the tour, we got our pint of Bruges Zot (The Lunatic from Bruges), which is the beer that won the World Beer Cup. It was great! Then we tried one of their other beers that was basically the same but a little stronger. The brewery was packed the entire time. They had 3 tours an hour, one in French, one in English, and one in Dutch. And each tour had about 50 people on it...they must have been raking in the dough. We wandered around more after that, going in and out of stores, finding really amazing parks and bridges, and just enjoying the nice weather. Around 6:00, we decided to go back to Brussels.
At the train station, we saw probably 100 young people dressed all in white. They were wearing crazy outfits. The girls wearing white miniskirts and boots. The guys had their faces painted, white pants, white shoes and white shirts. They told us they were going to a huge rave in Hasselt, Belgium called "Sensation White", where they have DJ's playing from 10 pm to 6 am and the only rule is that you have to be wearing white to come in. We seriously thought about going but in the end, decided that we wanted to be in Brussels and be able to wake up and see things the next day.After getting back to the B&B, showering, and having another beer with Jean Marc, we went into town to find somewhere to eat. While searching for ATMs, which were few and far between in Brussels, we heard the sound of somebody throwing up. The 4 of us turned to see a bride, in her wedding dress, being held up by 2 other people while she violently vomitted all over the sidewalk. A woman stood on the side holding her vail. After she was done, she was carried back into a car. Definitely an odd sight. All night, we kept trying to guess what had happened to her...we'll never know! We had dinner at a Thai place that was really good and went to a few bars after that.
This one place, called Delirium, was great! It had 3 levels and the walls and ceilings were covered in beer paraphenalia. Beer umbrellas, beer lights, beer bottles, beer signs. You also order beer out of a huge book and the different levels serve different types of beer. The place was packed and we met a bunch of people, some Italians, some Irish, some Belgians, some Brits...it was really fun. We had a great day in Brussels and Bruges.Sunday
We tried to take the tram into town but got a little confused. So we had to take a taxi to the Brussels Central train station. There, we got on one of those bus - sightseeing tours. I know, it's corny, but it was a really good way to see the city because a lot of the major sites are pretty far from each other. The tour companies were fighting over who would get our business and it got pretty heated! We felt kind of awkward in the middle and finally just jumped on one. The tour was great...we sat on the top of a double decker bus and got to see all the sights in Brussels! The European Parliment, the Atomium, the Royal Palace...It was great. When we got off, we had to find some more fries. We went to Fritesland, ate our fries, then jumped in a taxi back to our B&B to get our stuff and head home. Kristen took a cab to the airport and we took the train to our main station. All of us slept on the way back. It was a great trip. Brussels was very relaxed and friendly. Bruges was so fun - gorgeous. It was a great city that you wouldn't always put on your list of places to visit but we definitely enjoyed our time there. And the B&B made it so comfortable so I definitely recommend that place if you ever go to Brussels.
Sunday night, I went to a bar to watch Selection Sunday. We got there a little early and watched the Marseilles - Paris St. Germain soccer game...very intense. We walked in the bar and 75 people were silently staring at the screen. Paris lost and everyone left right after the game, very upset. But then I got to see Michigan selected for the tourney for the first time in 11 years! GO BLUE!
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