log 14: brussels
footache
Brussels is such a wonderful little city. This is my first time in Belgium and I had no idea it had such a large French influence. Belgium is the first country this trip that I had not gone to previously in my life, so I am experiencing everything here for the first time. From the frites to the waffles, Brussels is such a lively city. While there are a lot of tourists and school groups here it doesn’t feel as congested as London did. Mainly from the fact that everyone is so friendly here and the sidewalks are huge. There are tons of sites to see here but I really appreciate the amount of green the city has. Just yesterday I enjoyed my first cigar in Le Botanique after stumbling upon it by chance. Side note, cigars are very interesting. I don’t know if I could really get into it, but it was a cool experience. I felt very distinguished.
As I was walking around the city yesterday, which turned into a mini hike of about 30k steps. I found that two days in each location as a solo traveler is probably enough. On the first and second days here, I had already walked around and seen so many things. Today, the third day I had no clue what to do other than eat food. While that is a completely valid reason to stay somewhere, I think it could have helped me save costs or even travel to another city in Europe. While I am by no means upset with my decision to stay in Brussels for three days I just find myself wanting to see more of Europe rather than being “stuck” here for another day. However, after talking to my dad about work/life balance while traveling, he told me that there “is never just work or just play as a CEO.” So instead of lounging around and doing very little today, I am going to spend my time working, reading, and coding. I think that is an excellent use of my time. I get to plan my next adventure — it’s a big one — and work a bit on my product. Speaking of which, I was able to make some decent strides on the train to Brussels which I am very happy about.
progress:
Completed the first-time setup code for the user so that after they register it saves their unique data to Cloud Firestore.
That’s it… but it’s a big stride because right now I’m working on the structure of my app. Making sure I have a good foundation is far more important than actually getting the algorithms to work at this point. As long as I learned how to save the data online — and how I can tweak the code down the line to work the way I want it to — it is invaluable. My next steps are working a little bit on putting everything together and then, I think I’m almost done? I will never be truly done but after a short brainstorming session, I kind of am toward the finish for the structure side of things. Truthfully, finding that out for myself kicked my mood up ten notches because of how satisfying it is to work, learn, and develop something. I know the hard part hasn’t arrived yet, but I welcome it with open arms. I can’t wait to share photos of the progress I’ve done and talk more specifically about what my app will do and the functions it will have.
