Crossing the Channel
Friday was a pretty uneventful day. Exhausted from our London tour, we attempted to sleep in until 9:00am but our smoke detector went off at 8:30. We were up pretty quickly and shortly after being awoken, the noise stopped. We were up so we decided to pack early and head to the St. Pancras train station for our one 1:30 departure to Brussels. We chose to take a cabby to the station rather than fight the crowd at the tube stations. Riding the London underground is like heading to an airport where EVERYONE is late and NOBODY knows where they’re going. At St. Pancras, we stopped for coffee at Starbucks and waited for our train to arrive. We lugged our bags past the crowd and found a corner in the café to sit and relax with our lattes. Shortly after, an automated announcement came over the speaker “Please exit the building. This is an emergency.” We were a bit freaked out but didn’t have a clear path to the exit with our bags so we stayed put. A minute later a human announcer came and told us to ignore the message.
At 1:30pm we boarded our train and were off to Brussels, Belgium. We arrived and were met by our friend Kelly who took the train with us to Leuven. After arriving at the station, we had a 15 minute walk with our luggage to Kelly and Chris’ apartment. For the first time since we arrived in Europe, we had rain. It was refreshing after being in the sun all day in London, and as for the walk, we’ve grown quite accustom to walking everywhere.
We decided to go out to a local Italian restaurant for dinner. The rain had stopped so the walk was dry. It was my first experience being in a place where no one spoke English. Communication was actually much easier than I had expected.
Side note, Belgium has three national languages: French, German and Dutch. Many people also speak English because Brussels is the home of the European Union.
For dinner, I had the best pizza I’ve ever eaten. Italian pizzas have very thin crusts and strong flavors. I had prosciutto, onions and salami on top of pizza sauce and cheese.
We walked back to Chris and Kelly’s apartment through the village and finished the night with a home-made hot chocolate from Kelly.
No pictures from today, but be sure to view pictures from our entire trip on flickr (click here)
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