12 Days of Christmas: Italy & Belgium
The 11th & 12th countries I visited in 2024
I visited Florence for a few days prior to our family trip to Vienna in mid-October, hopping over specifically to meet up with a friend who was also bringing a few things to me from the US. (C took a solo trip to Switzerland on the heels of our first Vienna trip.) And then I took a solo birthday trip to Belgium in November simply because I had never been and C had no interest in going.
Florence highlights:
Seeing Laurie
Walking through Boboli Garden
Walking by the river and people watching
Eating!
Walking through Parco delle Cascine
Watching the sunset from Piazzale Michelangelo and Giardino delle Rose
While I got most of my Florence trip recapped in separate posts, I still have at least one more to write. I’d try to squeeze it in now, but these 2024 recaps have been hard enough to write in the midst of our current year-end travel to Hungary. Suffice it to say, Florence was amazing and I’d love to go back and take the girls. I’m hoping we can find a weekend at some point in the spring to pop over.
Brussels (and Ghent & Bruges) highlights:
Night tour with fascinating history
Finding an awesome Asian market that also had Mexican items; I stocked up on many things!
Taking a chocolate making class
Meeting (and having drinks with) three amazing ladies following our less than stellar day trip to Ghent & Bruges
Navigating public transit on my own
Shopping till I dropped (looking for things that were hard to find in Albania)
Brussels was not my favorite (nor my least favorite). I found it more vanilla than Copenhagen and was surprised at the number of panhandlers I saw; I wasn’t expecting that. There was also SO much road construction happening. The whole city felt torn up. It was also more expensive than I was expecting and so flat. (It’s next to Amsterdam, so it makes sense.)
In contrast to Albania, the highways leading in and out of Brussels were amazing. They felt just like being in the US, maybe even better. I did love all the languages I heard there; I wanted to speak them all. I met a couple one night at dinner (he was Cuban and she was Belgian) and struck up a conversation with them in Spanish. She invited me to meet her for lunch, which was fun.
Ghent and Bruges were definitely cuter than Brussels, and I probably would’ve enjoyed both more were it not for the tour I was on. The short story there is that the original tour guide ended up in the hospital and the backup was, well, not good. The Bruges Christmas market had just opened and was fairly festive but so, so crowded. I’m still glad I went. I doubt I’ll make a point of going back to Belgium, but if something specific took me that way, it would be fine.
And that completes our 2024 year of travel! I can’t wait to see what 2025 will bring. We have lots of places we’d love to see!