BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

After finally making my way to the airport in Prestwick, I had a short flight to Brussels, the so called "Capital of Europe". It is known as this because the Head Offices of the European Union and NATO are both located here along with many other international organizations. I arrived to a pretty dull and overcast day in Charleroi, located about 45 min from the Bruxelles Midi train station and headed towards my friend Torben's flat. Finally around 5:30PM local time and after 17 hrs of plane, bus, train, bus, plane, bus, train... I got there... Jagshemash!! lol. I watched a bit of the England vs. Trinidad game before I had a shower.. then put on some fresh clothes and I was ready to go again.. :) I went out to La Terrasse for dinner with Torb and Anna, his room mate. It's located right at the Merode subway stop and is really nice place with excellent food and lots of beer. Needless to say, after a few pints we headed to a bar called Delirium where they happened to have a live band playing. It was a small place that has plates covering the entire ceiling... It was awesome, and I forgot to mention that they serve 2500 different types of beer there and promise over 2000 in stock at all times!! Thats impressive.. :) I tried all kinds of different beer, some that I had never even heard of before. Some different lagers, pilsners and even strawberry beer. Anyways, the next day I slept in a little.. lol.. and when I woke up I took the picture of the view from their window. I was leaving for London later in the afternoon, but managed to head down to the Grand'Platz for an hour to see whats regarded as one of the most beautiful squares in Europe. They also happened to have a garden of lavender growing in the middle of the square for some reason that they were burning in an oven. As for the random dog picture on the sidewalk, I haven't been able to figure that one out yet.. lol. If anyone has any ideas.. please let me know!! haha. Anyways, after walking around for a bit, I had to hurry back to meet Torb so we could head to the train station and pick up our tickets to London for the weekend. Then it was off to London on a high speed train through the Channel Tunnel....

PAISLEY, SCOTLAND

I recently got back from an amazing 16 day trip through Europe covering six different countries. I'll be posting many pictures over the next few weeks from cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Brussels, but these first three are from a small Scottish town called Paisley. I started my trip flying from Toronto Pearson on June 14th and arrived the next morning at Glasgow International after a 6 hr flight and 5 hr time difference. I had a connecting flight to catch to Brussels in a few hours and after wandering around the Glasgow airport for a while looking for the RyanAir check-in counter, I finally found out that it was at a completely different airport that was over an hour away in Prestwick :s The discount airlines don't tell you this.. they list the airport as Glasgow Prestwick (It happens to be two different cities) lol.. I guess that's what you get for a $28 flight. I had to take a bus and a train to get there.. so luckily I had a 4 hr layover :) Anyways, it was a beautiful morning so I stopped off in Paisley for an hour and walked around for a bit. It was around 7:45 in the morning when I took these and my trip was just beginning....