Day 38: March 8: Belgium bound

Happy Women's Appreciation day! Today "women's appreciation" was celebrated here in Italy....but I'm pretty sure it was celebrated internationally as well. When I stepped out of my class, this awesome band was outside to greet me:

 Which was a super way to start my day...and really said "get your butt moving" ... I was headed to Belgium today. Though Belgium never even crossed my radar as somewhere to go, I wanted to check out "Sensation", which is a house music festival that takes place at various locations each year.

 Cool huh? Everyone dresses in white, and the concert goes all night long. Naturally, I had to be there. The other tricky thing about this trip is that instead of booking through a trip company, I planned everything on my own. Which in total includes: the bus to the airport, the plane there, hotel, trains around brussels, the tickets, and repeat for the way back.

So, we began our journey by taking the bus to Pisa. Also, it was just Michelle and I going, which added another layer of difficulty in that there was only one other person to rely on incase things went haywire. So, we set off to pisa, went through security, and braved an hour delay from Ryan air(discount european airline). When we landed, it was around 10 or 11 and we had planned on taking a taxi. I had heard of a shuttle that was available, and fortunately we found that. We learned taking the taxi to the train station would have cost us a cool 100 euro: I'll take the 13 we paid any day. When we arrived to the train station, we took a taxi to the hotel: we made it! I found the hostel, called the "Van Gogh hostel" because Van gogh used to paint there, on hostelworld.com. Dispite some sketchy reviews, I loved it. The reception area is open 24 hours, theres a small common area with wifi, and a bar. The rooms were plain but very clean, and they had huge windows that opened up to a garden. Totally funky and weird and perfect. Here are some images of the bar/room:

 

We unpacked, made our beds and then went to bed for the long day ahead!