Mon, 03 Nov 2003

author Liz	location Sydney, Australia
posted 08:48 AEDT 14/02/2004	section Europe2002/Europe/Belgium ( all photos )

Into Brussels ( No photos )
(Continued from France 2)
We arrived in Brussels, the capital of Belgium about an hour after we had left Paris. We had driven through Belgium earlier in the year when we drove Rosie to London, but we hadn't stopped anywhere then, so it was almost like being in yet another country.
From the train station, we caught the Metro to the other side of the city (and up the hill!) Once here, we spent a little while hunting around the streets for the hostel, and eventually we found it. It was a nice hostel, and we even got to be in the same dorm. Even better, it had a kitchen - the first once we had seen since Barcelona!
We dumped our bags and walked about fifteen minutes to the supermarket. Dinner was a delicious combination of chicken wings, chicken soup mix, rice and veges, and it really filled us up. Accompanied by a few nice cheap beers from the hostel bar, it was very nice meal. We decided to save a night of drinking Belgian beers on the town for another night, and went to bed early.

author Liz	location Sydney, Australia
posted 08:39 AEDT 14/02/2004	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Back to Paris one last time ( 8 photos )
On Monday morning, the weather wasn't looking much better, which was disappointing as we had wanted to stay another day and do some walking in the surrounding countryside. Instead, we packed our bags, checked out of the hotel and went in search of a French patisserie breakfast to quieten our growling stomachs. But we had no luck here either - both of the nice-looking patisseries were still shut at 10am, so we gave up waiting and trudged off to the train station, where we bought train tickets to Paris, and sat down to drink coffee while we waited for the train.
Back in Paris, we walked to a different but very close-by train station (Gare du Nord???) and bought tickets that would take us from Paris to Brussles, Belgium later that day.
By now we were both starving, so we walked a short distance from the train station until we found a nice pub. We stuffed ourselves with fresh bread and beer, and then I had a huge cheese omlette and Tim had a steak. Finally we had some proper food in our bellies, and we sat chatting and feeling full for a while.
We walked back to the train station, and boarded the Thalys train that would take us to Belgium. Thalys is basically the same as the TGV, so it goes really fast! Using the GPS, we saw that we reached a whopping 306km/h!!! Even the train conductor was interested to see what speed we were getting up to.
Somewhere we left France far behind and zipped into Belgium.

(customised)