EINDHOVEN a great time in BRUSSELS

WOW just WOW. This week was the most incredible, exhausting, bucket list checking off week of my life. Really though, we were constantly going. Whether it was walking, traveling, eating super yummy food, trying to figure out the many metros and public transit or seeing so many amazing landmarks of this beautiful world, this was a veryy busy week. A week I will always remember. Eight new countries in nine days! Some may say its crazy, but I say it was the greatest thing ever. And just as a warning... the pictures make it seem like a fun, easy-going vacation - and for the most part it was - but let me just say we had plenty of learning experiences. Lots of hiccups with our many travels, but somehow in the end it all worked out.  We seriously have been so blessed. Miracles happened this week every single day and it was obvious. With as many countries as we visited there was bound to be some issues, but we were lucky to have them all work out in the end. Forever grateful. Now to get started... Saturday morning, February 16th we woke up pretty dang early to head to the airport. Friday night felt like christmas eve as a kid. I was so excited to head out on this adventure. Our first stop was Eindhoven, Netherlands. We only had a couple hours here... it was more just a cheap place to fly into to start our week, but it was still a fun couple hours to start off the trip. We saw a couple cathedrals - they're everywhere over here so nothing new - and we also found this random bowling art piece in the middle of town. Reminded me of the last night before coming to Europe... bowling with drew and shawnee :') The best part was the sun. I know I talk about it a ton, but holy snap all week we had the sun and it was amazing! Eindhoven definitely set the tone for the rest of the week and it had me pumped!

Early morning flight but couldn't be more excited!

Back of the bus crew headed to our next stop - BRUSSELS, BELGIUM! Brussels is where we had our first hiccup of the week. The super cheap Airbnb we booked happened to be almost an hour outside of town which was a ton of extra money for an uber or a ton of extra time by transit. Like I said we made it work, but in the moment it was a little stressful. On the bright side, our had a beautiful airbnb out in the country of Belgium! I slept in the loft upstairs where there was a little sun roof window thing. It led straight out to the roof so duh I shimmied out, climbed around and enjoyed the view. 

We headed back to the city for some DELICIOUS food! If it weren't for all the walking we did, I would've gained 200 pounds. We had some of the best food Ive ever had on this trip. The Belgian waffles and fries were the highlight of the day for sure...

wow I can still imagine the taste of these fries... so good. 

This day we all had such a belly ache because we didnt have any "real" food. We really only ate the fries and waffles and other junk food. Living the dream. There were a few times on this trip where I was craving healthy food... when laynee wells is craving healthy food, you know something is wrong. 

Brussels was not what I expected, at all! I imagined a more chill city, but it was easily the most crowded city we visited. The streets were crawling with waffle lovers and it was pretty insane. Literally a waffle shop every other store and the lines were out the door, crazy! Worth it! The Grand Palace was a popular site. Perfect place for pretty pictures, watching other tourists take selfies and eating good food. Good time. 

Yes, I did my horse noise in the middle of the grand palace in brussels. 

Manneken Pis - pretty cool I guess. 

That night we walked around town and found some lit up cathedrals. Then some real stuff happened... So our airbnb was in a small little town an hour outside of brussels. We took brussels transit about 30 minutes to the outside of town and from there we usually would take hop on another city bus, but it was too late and the busses weren't running... so we found ourselves stranded in the cold, at night, with no way of getting home to our airbnb that would've taken 2 hours to walk to. So as you can see... we were in a bit of a predicament. This is where the first miracle comes in... We decided to start walking and hopefully find somewhere with a phone or people to talk to. We soon found a laundromat that had a family just barely leaving to get in their car. They were a french family, but lucky us the dad was a professor at the local college and knew some english. They were so dang helpful. They could've left us in the cold, but no this family of 5 let us in the laundromat, stayed with us and helped us get ahold of a taxi service that was still open. We were all so grateful for them and their help. We got home, made some ramen for dinner and we all passed out pretty quick. Long day and another long day ahead of us! 

The next morning was another miracle. Lets just say this trip started out pretty bumpy, but hey there was no where to go but up right? So we had another early morning bus to our next stop, but the transit wasnt running yet and we couldn't find a taxi service that opened early enough either. I don't even know how it all worked out, but miraculously madi found us a car service that got us to our bus just in time. We were all thinking we'd have to miss our bus and book one later but we were blessed once again!

When we made it on our bus and realized we were successfully heading to PARIS!

Eindhoven and brussels... what a way to start off this 9 day trip. Much love from BELGIUM!