Belgian Waffles!
We woke up around 8:30 on Sunday morning to Chris making us egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches on homemade biscuits. Our plan was to head to church in Leuven, grab a bite to eat and then walk through the town. We got ready and walked to their church and arrived around 10:00. ICEL, International Church of Evangelicals Leuven, is located in Hope College. Their services were pretty typical of ours…a few songs and then a sermon. In between songs, they had all of the children in the service come forward. The worship leader handed them each a small tambourine and all the kids worshipped up front with their instruments for one song. Once the song was over, a member of the church prayed for them and then they returned to their seats. That part of the service was my favorite.
We walked to a cute little café called Nosh after church and got a small brunch. Best bagel ever! We walked around Leuven for the rest of the afternoon. Leuven is a really cute town with the typical small streets and the cobblestone road. Food and cafes everywhere! After our walk through Leuven, we headed back to their apartment to pack all our stuff up and head into Brussels for a few hours. View pictures of our walk on flickr.
Brussels was packed! It was such a nice day so lots of crowds filled the streets. We walked around the city and saw the palace in the center and some other historical sites as well. We headed to where the food was after a short while because we were all starving. I swear all I am doing is eating and walking while we are here. Pretty great life if you ask me! We stopped for a bite to eat and then headed to get Belgian Waffles!!!! They were even better than we had imagined. Richie and I split one with Nutella, strawberries and whipped cream. They give you the smallest forks ever to eat it, so naturally, we ripped the waffle and dove in, eating with our fingers!
After the waffles, we walked down to see the “Peeing Boy” . Not really sure the history behind it but it represents some type of rebellion back in the day. Real specific I know J Believe it or not, there were loads of crowds taking pictures of him. Crazy tourists.
View our pictures of Brussels on flickr.
We headed back to where the car was parked to head to the train station. Chris and Kelly drove us to the station and we said our goodbyes. We had such a good time with them and look forward to when they are back in the states!
We waited about an hour in the station and then headed to our platform. It was a pretty uneventful hour and a half train ride. It had to be to make up for what was going to happen next. We arrived in Paris and had to buy our Metro tickets. We were directed to the machine to get our tickets, but it would not take our card. Super. We waited for someone to show up at the ticket counter, but they never did so we walked to the other end of the station and finally found someone sitting at a Ticket Information desk. We figured out where to go and made it to the platform with 10 minutes to spare. Phew! We hopped on to our train and headed to our first stop to switch trains. We arrived and made our train to our final destination, St. Germain en Laye – almost there! Or so we thought…
The train stopped at one of the stations on the way to our final destination as it had several times in the last 15 minutes. This time was different. It really stopped. The person running the train had made an announcement several minutes before the train stopped but since we don’t speak much French, we didn’t know what he said. We noticed that we were the only people still on the Metro and everyone else had left and taken another train. After waiting in the dark for 15 minutes, we realized that the man overhead told us to get off of this train and hop on the other to get to our destination. Holy crap we are going to die at a random Metro station outside of Paris! We got off the train and headed toward the exit. At this point, we are both a bit freaked out and were already half an hour late for Christian, our friend who was picking us up from our final train stop. After what seemed like an eternity but in fact was only another 3 minutes, another train came into the station. It was headed our way! Relieved, we hopped on the train and three stops later we arrived. Thank the Lord! Christian was there to pick us up and we headed to where we would be staying for the next week. We had some tea with Christian and Pascal and chatted about our plans for the week. We headed to bed around 12:15 AM – safe and sound in a cozy and comfy guest house.
View all of our pictures from today on flickr.
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