5-June: Paris -> Brussels

Our last morning in Paris we took a walk to see the Grand Opera building, Place de la Concorde, and the Garden of Tuileres.  It was a nice relaxing morning walking through the garden, sitting around under the trees, and people watching.  We wanted to get some video footage of the traffic at the square, but there wasn’t much going on.  When we were in Paris, after Meghan’s study abroad program, there was an insane amount of traffic, 5 or 6 cars wide, with no lines to separate the lanes.  Scooters would weave through the cars and there was a constant wailing of horns.

We headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags and then walked to the train station.  We got there early and sat down to wait, after some time we heard chanting, whistles, and drums.  It was a parade of people protesting something.  They came into the train station from the streets in long line.

We sat around the platform we were supposed to leave from until about 20 minutes before the departure time and realized no one was boarding the train.  We walked up to the platform and realized why, there wasn’t a train there, only the engine… no wonder no one was there.  So looking at the departure board we saw that our train was moved to a different platform.  We boarded the train and found our seats.  The alarm sounded to let us know that the train was leaving and then everything stopped… there was a “technical problem.”  It never fails, the French trains always have problems.

We arrived in Brussels around 5pm and made our way to the hotel.  Our hotel is in a good location,, about 1km from the city center.  Starving, we walked to the center and get some food.  We have a loose daily budget to go by on our trip, and since we didn’t do much today, we decided to get a nice dinner.  Most of the restaurants in Brussels and Paris have a lot of outdoor seating.  They take over the sidewalks with lots tables and this is where we sat to eat.  We both ordered pizza; Meghan, the pizza diavolo (salami), and I got four cheese.  I ordered my pizza as a “menu,” which means it comes as courses. In this case, it was pizza + tiramisu + and an after dinner coffee.  The tiramisu was excellent, best I’ve ever had and the coffee was good and STRONG.

Next, we went to a bar Meghan had previously been to during her study abroad program, called Delirium.  This place has over 2000 different beers, a couple hundred on tap, and the rest in bottles.  We found Meghan’s special cherry beer (Kastreel Red ?) and each had a glass.  We didn’t stay too long, decided to get some much needed sleep instead.  We’ll save the partying for later :), we still have two nights in Brussels!