Sleeping in a 10-bed dorm room with people you don't know can be... let's just say, depending on your personality, it can be less than fun. The two of us tried to get to bed around 11:30pm after the hostel's 11pm curfew, and at that point, about ¼ of the people who were supposed to be in the room actually were. So, throughout the night, people came in and out of the room as they needed to, arriving from out-of-town, or just the local bars. The lights would turn on and off and the door would creek open and slam shut. Someone even used an electric toothbrush during the night (a bit rude to brush your teeth with an electric toothbrush while others are trying to sleep, don't you think?).
Below Erin's bed was the large man who snored loudly. And, somewhere between our beds, there was a person with a hacking cough that made Erin cringe every time she heard it. James's top-bunk-mate made his way in around 3:30am, and while James slept with an eye-mask and ear plugs, it's tough to sleep when the bed is moving. Erin used her iPod and hid under her covers as her mechanisms of choice, but they were even less successful. Needless to say, it wasn't a great night's sleep, but it was still a bed - however, Erin has requested a respite from the "dormitory-style" accommodations.
Erin woke up early and decided to shower. She headed down to the basement of the hostel to shower (another interesting experience, but she'll spare you the details). Once James was awake, we tried to quietly gather our belongings and exit the dorm room. There were still several people sleeping in the dorm room, so we Erin did her best to be quiet. James was decidedly less sympathetic, especially concerning his 3:30am neighbors. We spent about an hour or so in the lobby, working on planning more of our time in Europe as well as planning the rest of our day in Brussels.
After checking out of the hostel, and locking our bags in the luggage room, we headed out to explore Brussels. James led us to our first stop, which was a
local tourist center. We found the woman working at the center to be extremely helpful. She provided us with some maps and gave us a good suggestion for a healthy lunch in the city center. Using one of the tourist maps we had, James led us to the city center. Unlike our time in Paris, James had quite a bit of difficulty with the map we were using due to an abbreviated street inclusion method, as well as Brussels' streets changing names every third block. This was fine – we did end up “exploring” a bit more of the city than we had anticipated. But, that's the way travel should go - at least some of the time.
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| Just think - this is James's "confident" face - you don't want to see him when he's confused. |
Brussels is a fascinating city, home to the
European Union's ("EU") seat of government. If you imagine European countries cooperating through the EU, Brussels is quite like Washington D.C. And, like D.C., Brussels is filled with a combination of imposing goverment buildings and tourist-oriented shops and sites, with a splash of European history and royals thrown in for the bargain. After leaving the tourist office, and imploring the hostess to do a "Tabitha" introduction video, we wandered into Brussels' St. Hubert Galleries, a glazed shopping arcade dating from the 1800's that housed mainly jewlery and chocolate shops.
The Galleries led us to the
Grote Markt ("Grand Place"), site of Brussel's main market since 1,100, and now home to the imposing Town Hall and surrounding city service buildings.
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| Brussels' Town Hall in the Grote Markt. |
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| Some of the period architecture on display in Brussels. |
We left the Grote Markt now on a mission to find the restaurant the tourist center hostess had suggested, wandering up and down Brussels' winding streets and soaking in a variety of tourist activities - the Belgian beergardens; the Belgian Waffle shops; the Belgian Fries shops, and, of course, the Belgian chocolate makers. Any reader of this blog can guess which activities suited this traveling pair the best...
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| Erin demonstrates the proper way to assess Belgian Waffles - by weight and chocolate content. |
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| A cold James warmed up to some free chocolate samples. |
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| Another Belgian staple - "to go" fries drenched in Belgian mayo. |
So we wandered, and wandered, and eventually made our way to yet another tourist office - this one devoted to an older, more staid tourist group than the earlier office. We took a more detailed map dedicated to the historical sites, combined it with our marked-up map, and - like tourist-detectives - determined that the restaurant we had been searching for was close. Very close. In fact, it was right across the street from the tourist office. It was visible from the tourist office's front door, with signs in no less than four languages. Luckily, we had worked up an appetite, and indulged in an extremely healthy lunch:
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| Our non-waffle, non-fry healthy, museum lunch. |
We finished up our walking tour, viewing the Belgian Palace and ending our tourist-day with a stroll through Brussels' main park, the Warande. We even found another rainbow to add to our traveling picture collection:
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| Tabitha takes up brief residence in front of the Belgian Palace. |
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| A Belgian Rainbow to help finish up our day in Brussels. |
Then, it was back to the hostel to pick up our bags. We walked to the train station and boarded the 3.5 hour train to Amsterdam. We arrived after 8, and booked our next three trips: an overnight to Berlin, a train to Warsaw, and another overnight to Prague. We caught the ferry outside Amsterdam's central train station, and walked along the water until we found our bed and breakfast - a small room in a shared apartment, where we were able to do laundry and decompress from our longest-yet train ride.
