Thursday we had a mandatory field trip (not that anyone objected…) in our orientation groups to one of three locations. My group rode a bus to Nancy, France for the afternoon. This town is just large enough to be worth the trip but not large enough that an afternoon felt like too brief a time spent there. There are also two different architectural styles present. The older Romanesque style from the reigns of two King Louis is in the main square called Stanislas Place. The other more prominent style is art-nouveau that was erected in the late 60s. Unfortunately, the majority of this floral style was destroyed in the 80s before it became protected under French law. We walked from one end of the city to the other with a verbose guide and then had about 25 minutes at the end to run back to the waffle stand and get some of those for dinner.
For the weekend my friends and I decided to visit the semi nearby town of Bruges in Belgium. It’s important to have seen the movie In Bruges with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson to appreciate a few of our decisions on the trip. We visited the bar that Colin Farrell drank at with a mean dwarf, climbed to the top of the Belfry, paid our respects to the vile of dried blood of Jesus, and fortunately no one jumped from the top of the tower while we were there (which by the way would be impossible in real life). We arrived Friday night and at dinner at the hostel before heading out to look at the sights illuminated in the night. We stopped in at an American-style bar and an Irish pub before heading back to the hostel for the night. The hostel was nice considering we paid a mere 14 euro a night for our stay. We enjoyed our free breakfast the next morning before visiting five museums and eating a lunch of cheese, chocolate, and a baguette. The highlight of the museum tour was without a doubt the Museum of Archaeology, which had a dress-up area meant for children but well utilized by my friends and I. In the other museums we visited we saw one of the only Michelangelos outside of Italy, the tomb of Charles the Bold, a bizarre lace exhibit, and a very stately room used to conduct city government business (Aunt Julie, it’s too bad you never got to be Mayor I such a room, in included a photo of it in my albums for this week). Saturday night we went back to the hostel for dinner and went out to the Druid Cellar (the Colin Farrell bar) to check out the atmosphere afterwards. We headed back to the hostel for some live music before being literally rocked to sleep two floors above the DJ. We headed out early on Sunday but only after purchasing some Belgian chocolate for the road.
Check out the pictures and let me know how you’re doing! I’m going to Brussels this coming weekend to meet my Uncle Art, so it’s Belgium for the first two weekends. xoxo, Grace
Nancy Pictures! and Bruges Pictures!
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