Once we'd set off from the township of Bruges, we had arrived in Brussels under an hour later. First stop was to dump our bags in the lockers, so that we could cruise around freely in the city without the burden. Brussels was only ever going to be a half day, as we thought that it was the best way for us to get back to London taking the Eurostar train back under the channel tunnel.
Today we weren't successful in locating Jean Claud AKA The Muscles from Brussels. Obviously our paparazzi skills have waned over the time and we suspect he now resides in the USA somewhere anyway. You can't always have successes like the Queen, Silver K Man and Johnny Depp!
More seriously, we made our way with some difficulty into the city centre to the hub of the main tourist area. Brussels has an underground tram system which felt hard to negotiate initially, but we ended up working it out. We headed straight to the Grand Square which was certainly that! It was amazing to see the opulence and grandeur of this area, with every side as impressive as the next. Yet another place where the aristocracy seemed to have spared no expense.
We were a bit limited here for time, so it was a matter of grabbing a map from the tourist information centre and simply wandering around on our own. The main hub that surrounded the Grand Square was a hive of tourist activity, restaurants and shops. As mentioned in an earlier blog, the Belgians are famous for their production of chocolate. In one particular area close to the square, there was a chocolatier at least every third shop. It was hard to pass up!
Today's challenge was to spend the final 13€ on our Euro card. It seemed reasonable to go into a clothing or chocolate shop. The clothes didn't impress us much, but at the time we seemed to be looking for something around 13 so that was never going to work. Later we thought we could buy something for more and use the 13 on the card, then cash for the rest. We went to one chocy shop, who was cool to split but then said the minimum for the card was 15€. Stupid woman! No deal. The point of the card machine limits is that they want people to spend more, which we were going to anyway! Her loss!
Thankfully back at the main train station, a girl in a chocolate shop there helped us out and we finally got rid of the last 13€. We still have more cash, but we can just change that to Hong Kong dollars later. Small amounts on cards can sometimes be very hard to spend and you can't get it out at an ATM, hence the challenge! In the ended we bought some delicious chocolates, some for the train ride to London and some for home.
Today we're glad we took the extra effort to visit this great place. We were disappointed that we didn't have enough time to see the Atomium, but we decided it was better just to take our time rather than rush ourselves to see one more monument. We enjoyed a lovely lunch in an Italian pizzeria, this time opting to share a pizza, rather than one each on our own.
We headed back to the station to ensure that we had enough time to get our luggage from the lockers and go through customs. Once aboard the train, we cracked the red wine, broke out some of the Belgian chocolates and sat back, relaxed and watch a couple of Criminal Minds episodes.
Our biggest highlight of he day was meeting up with Spencer (Richard's old school friend) and Heidi at King's Cross Station. We actually met up at the 9 3/4 platform photo point, for all you Harry Potter fans! Of course we too indulged in a cheeky photo op. We're massive fans and will be having a Harry Potter-athon at our place in the near future and by chance we are going to the Harry Potter Studio Tour tomorrow.
We stupidly forgot to get a photo with Spence and Heidi, because we were having an awesome catch up and fantastic food, so we missed out. A fantastic night! It was cool seeing some Melbourneites overseas, a memory that we won't forget!
No comments:
Post a Comment