21- Belgium: Breaking news from Brussels

A couple of months of work was more than enough for us so a break was required for a couple of days. We’d forgotten how tiring this “real world” stuff could be! A quick look at flight websites showed you could get pretty cheap flights in and out of Belgium for a weekend so off we went. A weekend of tourism was what we planned but it turned into something else altogether.

We arrived early Friday evening and had a lovely night strolling through the city- nice food and a few drinks. We had seen lots of soldiers with guns on the streets but hadn’t taken much notice as this was the EU capital and neither of us had been to Belgium before so didn’t know what was normal or not. We’ve been to a number of countries where having soldiers with guns on the street is just a regular day!

The next morning we headed out for breakfast and a walk. We arrived back to the hotel at lunch with a view to then moving onto do more touristy things further afield. When we got into a Wifi zone (the hotel) messages started coming through- “is all OK”, “what’s going on over there?” “what are you up to?”, “have you been able to leave your hotel?”. Oblivious as to what was going on, we checked the news sites and saw that Brussels was apparently on lockdown due to terrorist threats- this was coming a week after the Paris attacks so it wasn’t totally out of the blue but was definitely news to us. The more we read, the clearer it became that we’d be best to just stay in the hotel. The safest place to be. better safe than sorry and all that. As the day progressed and we continued to get news updates, the city continued to close down more and more things as the search for people involved in the Paris attacks intensified. - no trains running, the mayor had told all bars and restaurants to close. Not much we could do really. All very disconcerting but at least we were nice and safe in our hotel.

That plan went well for us until about 2am when my wife woke me. “There’s lots of noise outside our door, will you get up and check what it is?”. As a good husband I got up and did what I was told so we could both go back to sleep. I looked through the peephole in the door first to check if I could see what the noise was. Surprisingly I could see quite a lot through that little hole! What seemed like the entire Belgian army (or at least ten to fifteen of their SWAT team) along with their large rifles were outside our room and coming and going out of the room across the hall from ours. This was not what I was expecting! I continued to watch for a few minutes and they all seemed relatively calm so I took the step of opening our door……….. very slowly. Straight away one of the plain-clothes policemen was over to me saying “No issue sir, go back to bed, no issue, just routine”. It’s like that phrase- nobody has ever calmed down after been told to calm down! This may have been a lot of things but routine was not how I would describe it, not with that number of soldiers and at this time on the fifth floor of a hotel that they’d need keycard access to get up to.

So step two of calming our nerves was to ring reception and find out what was really going on. The answer we got there was equally unsuccessful in calming us down. “Just a routine ID check sir, no issue”. Really? At 2am? Really? That sounds like the most non-routine ID check we’ve ever come across. So what could we do? We couldn’t leave our room- we had a whole division of the Belgian army outside our room- sure, we’re as safe here as anywhere! Surely they’d evacuate us if there was a real issue. What else was there to do but sleep?! Well for me anyway, my wife spent the rest of the night reading news updates and trying to book flights back to Dublin on Sunday morning to no avail. I guess we’re stuck here until check out.

So the next morning, with one of us well rested, and no more walkie talkies in the corridor outside the room, we said we’d go for a stroll around just to see what was going on. Couldn’t stay in the hotel any longer- going stir crazy.  Walking through the streets, it was clear everyone else had the same idea. How long can you stay indoors when nothing is actually happening outside? There were naturally lots of army on the streets but lots of people too milling around too. As we walked, the happiest people we came across were a few British TV reports who we overheard congratulating each other on a good job finding a nice quiet street to report from! It’s all about how you frame the story after all. Hundreds of people were walking in the street parallel but they were filming on the street where nothing was open. It linked to well to a photo one of the news webstes had used overnight showing Brussels being deserted due to the terror alerts. Only issue my eagle eyed wife spotted with the photo was that there was no sign of the 50 foot Christmas tree that was sitting in the middle of the square. No idea when the photo was from but it certainly wasn’t from that weekend.

Brussels isn’t a big city to walk around so it wasn’t long before we were retreading our steps so we were wondering what we should do for the rest of the day- original plan of a trip to Bruges was obviously not going to happen. As we walked, a large amount of police and army vehicles began mobilizing down the street and a few of them began clearing taxis from a rank. They clearly had some sort of information and we didn’t stay around to find out what that was. WE collected our bags and headed for the airport four hours early. Certainly wasn’t the place we wanted to be but we figured it was as safe a place as any in the city. That day it was safe but sadly after the attacks on the airport in March that thinking has now been proven false also.

Brussels, or what we saw of it was lovely, beautiful buildings, great beer, super chocolate. Obviously it was disappointing that we didn’t get further than a kilometre from our hotel but maybe next time.

So that was our weekend away- definitely could have been better but given what’s gone on before and since, it could have been a lot worse too.

Click here to see a selection of photos from our Belgian trip

Route

Fly Dublin to Brussels, fly back to Dublin

20- Spain: From the frying pan to the flames

A few more flights, a few more steps closer to home. You know you’ve been travelling for a long time when your reflex in the bathroom is to look for the bin to put the toilet paper in! You mean we can throw stuff in the toilets again? Wow. And can we drink the water that comes out of the tap? Yes? The wonders of the world. How we forget how the other half lives! And with that introduction we arrive to the tap water drinking, sewerage working, toilets flushing utopia that is Spain. Welcome to paradise! 

First stop in lovely Espana was to the coastal town of Calpe, an hour from Malaga. We were there to bear witness to the phenomenon that is “two accountants who trained together in Deloitte Cork, then moved to Australia and then came back to Europe to get married”- these two certainly sound like they tick all the boxes! Good on them. We had a lovely couple of days relaxing and de-jet lagging around Calpe before the big day which was nice. The day itself was super as we were shuttled around the area and treated to a wonderful day and night out.

After the hospitality of the wedding, it was time to don the backpacks once again, or wheel them whichever you prefer, and head north as we hopped on the Spanish high speed train, the Ave (as in Ave Maria!) and headed to Barcelona. It’s a really super train system. Similar to Japan and definitely the best we’ve come across outside of there.

Barcelona itself is a very funky city and certainly lives up to its huge reputation as one of the coolest around. With heaps of arty monuments and buildings, as well as a wide variety of food, there’s a huge amount of things fighting for your attention. All of the cities highlights are well worth visiting with Park Guell, La Sagrada Familia cathedral, La Boqueria market and the Nou Camp all being great entertainment. The Nou Camp, the home of Barcelona FC is a good few hours. We’ve done a few tours like this before. This one took the mythmaking to whole new levels as they really pushed all their players past and present to deity level. Amusing the propaganda that’s written around the place- North Korea would be proud of some of it. I suppose somebody has to be employed to write the stuff. I was very impressed though when you get to the pitch they’ve actually covered over a bunch of seats for the summer and built a pitchside bar/ café. Having a coffee pitchside was a nice cherry on top of the tour.

Heading to the Boqueria market was a right treat. So much gorgeous food, I came very close to drowning on my own drool. Thankfully it didn’t come to that and we just had lunch instead!

It seems incredible that Barcelona has a population of just 1.5million people but attracts 7.5 million tourists a year. That’s 5 times the population, incredible. In comparison Ireland as a whole got 7 million tourists last year. Popular spot indeed.

From the Catalan capital we moved across to the official capital, Madrid to enjoy a few days there and celebrate one year of marriage. It’s being a pretty hectic year all things considered; amongst other things we’ve visited 21 countries in 12 months- not a bad return. We’ll be hard pressed to keep that pace up!

Madrid was great for the few days. It’s a royal city so similar to London in many ways with loads of palaces and royal monuments. Good to stroll around but the real delight we found was the tapas tour you can do. Madrid has a huge amount of tapas bars, so many that it is an appealing pastime for tourists to make their merry way from one bar to another, for a night getting merrier and merrier while doing it! A great way to spend some time sampling different tapas and pinxtos in various cafes while washing them down with some cheap Spanish drinks. What’s not to love about it.

From the royal capital we moved to the Catholic capital and got to Seville where we began to realize that the thermometers in Spain must be broken. It was very hot in Barcelona and Madrid, in Seville we began to realize why the Spanish invented siestas! The mercury was rising and so was the number of rest stops and drink stops we were taking just to get some shade. The delights of a Spanish summer.

Seville was quite a revelation to us. A really gorgeous city, lots of cathedrals, beautiful buildings, super food. Oh the food. Spain as a whole has a given us some of the best food of our trip. Just beautiful. It would be the number one reason why we’d go back there. 

Our final stop of the eight months was to the frying pan of Spain, Cordoba where we were the weather gave us a volcanic-like greeting and my sister and her family gave us..... a wonderfully warm welcome! 45 degrees to hit while we were. Amusing to be around the city in that temperature and realise that the only people out and about are tourists! All the locals are far too sensible to be anywhere outdoors in that temperature.

So after eight months on the road, we come to an end. We left our Australian family in October and our final stop was to our Spanish family- a fitting end and one that we arrived at reluctantly. 

"Are you sure we can't go on? Ah go on, just another few months?!?! Are you sure? Last chance....."

Our trip from Melbourne to Cork with many, many stops along the way is at an end. It’s been the most amazing adventure, one that we will never forget and hopefully one day we’ll hit the road again and add to these stories.

With heavy hearts we end our trip but we have many memories, over 12,000 photographs and 20 blogs with us for company, it’s time to unpack those boxes we shipped………

Click here to see a selection of photos from our Spanish trip

Our route:

Fly to Alicante, trains to Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Cordoba, fly Malaga to Cork

Our overall route:

Australia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Philippines, Hong Kong & Macau, New Zealand, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, USA, Spain, Ireland