For the next part of my journey, I ventured into Reims, France. Actually, more like crawled…
My finals in Granada and then a week of hard traveling had given me a nasty cold that I couldn’t seem to shake. I know, I know, I’m weak, but I made the executive decision to curl up in Reims for a few days to lick my wounds and stymie the hemorrhaging of my bank account. Why Reims? Well, I found an affordable hotel there and I wanted to be close to Paris, which would soon be my next destination. Other than that, it was just luck. Turns out it was good luck.
Reims (curiously pronounced “RrrANCE”… or something to that effect) is an ancient city in the north of France, about an hour by train from Paris. Besides being in the heart of Champagne country, Reims’ Cathedral was the historical site of all of France’s coronations, most notably among these being the coronation of Charles VII (the one that Joan of Arc was supposedly responsible for).
After a little bit of R&R in Reims, I traveled to Paris on December 30th to meet my friend, Nikki Foskey. Nikki is a friend from home, and she came to visit me for the last week of my vacation.
We did just a little bit of touring in Paris, then celebrated New Years in front of the Sacré Coeur (which was actually a bitterly cold and slightly miserable experience), before heading off to Brussels, Belgium on the first day of 2013.
We arrived into Brussels cold, hungry, tired, and with no idea what to expect. After checking into our hostel, we wandered around what turned out to be an incredibly beautiful and extremely quirky city. I’m still not sure whether Brussels is always lit up, or if we just stumbled across some post-holdiay light displays, but in any case the city positively glowed… especially the Town Hall, which we stumbled across one night lighting up in all different hues to classical music. Breath-taking.
As far as eccentricity goes, Brussels really took the cake with their little darling, Manneken Pis. Now, dear little Manneken Pis is actually only a small statue of a little boy peeing into a fountain, but the city of Brussels is obsessed with him (or maybe that’s just the tourist influence…). In any case, he is EVERYWHERE and we quickly made a game of spotting all of the Mannekens big and small throughout the city.
I don’t think that I’ve ever had a traveling experience that wasn’t food-centric, so of course we dined on all things Belgian waffle, Belgian beer, Belgian chocolate, and Belgian french fries. We also took a side trip to a few museums, on of which was a chocolate museum (of course) and another featuring an exhibit of Manneken Pis in all different international costumes.
*Ok, so admittedly, I did not take enough pictures of food or Brussels. It was very cold and I was being a wuss, I apologize.
After Brussels, Nik and I went on to conquer Amsterdam.
Amsterdam is amazing, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. And no, I don’t mean for the typical reasons. The whole city is beautiful, full of some spectacular architecture and beautiful canals that become illuminated at night. Yes, we went to the Amsterdam Sex Museum, stumbled into the Red Light District, and visited a coffee shop or two, but we also got to visit the Heineken museum and see Anne Frank’s attic hideout. We tried to go to the Van Gogh museum, but only made it for the last 5 odd minutes, unfortunately. We were only in Amsterdam for about 2 days, but it was a wonderful trip and I highly recommend this city to anyone who can make it there, because the concentration and variety of culture was astounding for just one city.
Restless Spirit Syndrome 