Up nice and early today to be at St Pancras for the Eurostar to Brussels. The train station is lovely, nice and clean and easy to navigate. We boarded the train and had pre booked 4 seats around a table next to the food cart, just in case. The ride was so smooth and before we knew if we were in a dark tunnel and popped out in France. The whole journey from London to Brussels took about an hour and a half from city center to city center . Half an hour wait time before the train and extremely quick customs and passport control. It has to be the easiest, fastest and most comfortable way to see Europe.
From there we jumped in a taxi to our hotel which cost 18 Euro – no meter and think we were taken for a ride here. We are staying the night at the Adagio right in the center of Brussels. The 1 bedroom apartment cost 99 Euro’s (about $125AUD at the moment) – it’s is awesome – bedroom, lounge room, kitchen, separate toilet, bathroom (with the best sink Nigel has ever seen) and loads of space. The reception smells like dead mice, but hey, we can put up with that.We dumped our bags and went exploring in the rain, only to find my jacket was the only one that was waterproof. A few streets down and a quick walk through the Christmas markets and we were in the old ‘Grand Place Grote Markt’ – it is an amazing square surrounded by the most magnificent old buildings covered in detail, statues and gold. There was a huge nativity scene in the center and loads of old cobblestone streets full of gorgeous shops, restaurants and chocolate bars running off it everywhere. We got ourselves lost amongst it all and stopped for lunch at Pizzeria Napoli where the old grandpa runs the restaurant. Spaghettis, Pizza and Poulet with Pommes (chicken and chips) later and we were all full. Everyone we met speaks French here, which is good as we had no idea what language ‘Belgonians’ are meant to speak. The kids have been using their French already with the basic hello’s and goodbyes etc…
A bit more walking around the old town and back to the room to let the kids have a run. I continued shopping at the center attached to our hotel and found the most stunning homeware shop ever!!It was amazing a I would have loved to have brought everything home!! I managed a few pillow cases and a catalogue that weighs about 4 kgs so will have to see how I go getting that back.
For dinner, we headed over the road to Chi Chi Tex Mex restaurant which was tragic and were served by Mr Personality himself – puffed out chest, wasn’t going to catch your eye if you wanted to be served type of guy. The food was pretty average and it was back to the hotel for a good sleep.
The hotel had laundry facilities so we did two loads today - nice and clean for the next leg of our trip. We pick up our car tomorrow and make our way over to Germany to the Nurnburg Ring – some race track where they test drive cars. A lot of the area is closed as we are out of season but we will have a stop there anyway. We have decided to bypass Leige – we’ve been watching it on the news and the Markets we were wanting to stop at seem to still be full of police, memorials and news crews. Might not be something for the kids to be seeing…..
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