Europe Trip: Chapter 2
At the end of our last chapter, our heroes had defeated the evil hotel lock and had been reunited with their possessions. What awaits them now?
We head out of the hotel, and back to the subway station. We decide to visit a museumish area of Brussels, and head down to the Schuman subway stop which is close to a large park called the Cinquantenaire. After grabbing lunch at a little cafe, we look at an art museum there (Greeks were very obsessed with male genitalia) and a military history museum. We then head to a restaurant called the Carpe Diem on the advice of a fellow at the Autoworld museum, and have a delicious meal. While enjoying supper, we watch the traffic chaos at an intersection just outside the restaurant - the lights are a bit confusing to me (a red light, a green cross, and a red arrow - what the bloody hell is a green cross?) and I become much happier with our decision to take the train over driving (not to mention that the vast majority of European cars are standard, and I have no clue how to drive a standard).
After supper, we get on the subway at Merode station (it's right outside the restaurant we ate at) and head back to the hotel. We breathe a sigh of relief when the key works, and promptly fall asleep again (still trying to recover from the flight and time change). The next morning, we grab breakfast and check out without incident, and head to the train station. As we are walking into Brussels Midi station, we are again struck by the overwhelming smell of urine, and I'm convinced by the hideous smell and the long stream of liquid that every homeless person within a few kilometres is making a sport of pissing on the garbage can right beside the front door. We find our train without incident, and hop aboard a Thalys heading towards Paris. We are planning on meeting up with my mother and sister and two of my aunts in Paris for around 12:30 at their hotel (which is very close to our Paris hotel), and everything is going well until the train comes to a stop 5 minutes after leaving Brussels. We end up sitting there for close to a half hour, and finally pull into Gare Du Nord station in Paris around 40 minutes late. We get off the train...
...and you know what ... means by now.
Interesting factoid of the day: The French TGV trains have the current world speed record for conventional trains, beating out the Thalys, Eurostar, and ICE trains by going an average of 515 km/h in a high-speed test run.
We head out of the hotel, and back to the subway station. We decide to visit a museumish area of Brussels, and head down to the Schuman subway stop which is close to a large park called the Cinquantenaire. After grabbing lunch at a little cafe, we look at an art museum there (Greeks were very obsessed with male genitalia) and a military history museum. We then head to a restaurant called the Carpe Diem on the advice of a fellow at the Autoworld museum, and have a delicious meal. While enjoying supper, we watch the traffic chaos at an intersection just outside the restaurant - the lights are a bit confusing to me (a red light, a green cross, and a red arrow - what the bloody hell is a green cross?) and I become much happier with our decision to take the train over driving (not to mention that the vast majority of European cars are standard, and I have no clue how to drive a standard).
After supper, we get on the subway at Merode station (it's right outside the restaurant we ate at) and head back to the hotel. We breathe a sigh of relief when the key works, and promptly fall asleep again (still trying to recover from the flight and time change). The next morning, we grab breakfast and check out without incident, and head to the train station. As we are walking into Brussels Midi station, we are again struck by the overwhelming smell of urine, and I'm convinced by the hideous smell and the long stream of liquid that every homeless person within a few kilometres is making a sport of pissing on the garbage can right beside the front door. We find our train without incident, and hop aboard a Thalys heading towards Paris. We are planning on meeting up with my mother and sister and two of my aunts in Paris for around 12:30 at their hotel (which is very close to our Paris hotel), and everything is going well until the train comes to a stop 5 minutes after leaving Brussels. We end up sitting there for close to a half hour, and finally pull into Gare Du Nord station in Paris around 40 minutes late. We get off the train...
...and you know what ... means by now.
Interesting factoid of the day: The French TGV trains have the current world speed record for conventional trains, beating out the Thalys, Eurostar, and ICE trains by going an average of 515 km/h in a high-speed test run.
posted by Ryan Slobojan at 14:39
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