4.03 pm

Back from my whirl-wind, not quite 48 hour tour of Brussels. All in all, I'm glad that I went - but at the same time, I'm absurdly glad to be back home.

The trip got off to a rather rocky start when the conductor on the train to Brussels informed me that my ticket was no good for the train I was on and I would have to pay her 80 euros. I was furious, mostly because the website I'd bought the ticket from had been mostly in Dutch and the ticket itself said it was good for travel on any train. It didn't help the conductor didn't speak very good English and I don't speak any French. In the end, she only charged me 18 euros - and I still didn't know what was wrong with my ticket!

The train station in Brussels was ridiculously confusing. I had expected to arrive in Brussels Central and ended up in Brussels Zuid, possibly because I had, in fact, been on the wrong train. The guy at the information desk helped with the ticket situation - apparantly, even though I'd bought the ticket through what looked like a Thalys website, it was only good on intercity (IC) trains. He wasn't so good with getting me to Central. He told me to go buy a ticket at the window, so I waited in a room packed with sweaty, smelly people for about 20 minutes - only to learn that the ticket I had used to get to Brussels was good for travel between the train stations too, and I just needed to go upstairs and hop on the next train.

The best part about the whole thing is that they didn't even check my ticket on the way home!

4.25 pm

The city herself more than made up for my travel difficulties. Although I spend the better part of the two days with my head in the guidebook, trying to figure out exactly where I was, I did manage to figure out the layout of the city by the time I left. My directional sense being what it is, I didn't realize that all the mini maps in my guidebook were oriented in different directions, which made for some interesting times.

I did not try either the mussels or the fries. I did, however, have a Belgium waffle (hot off the grill, with little bits of caramel in the dough and powdered sugar on top, like a little bit of heaven on a paper plate) and lobster (with champagne and truffle sauce, although I was reminded that lobster ends up being a great deal of work for very little meat). I'm not a big beer drinker, but I did have a raspberry lambic (delicious!) and Jupiler (went well with my fried scrimps, but not my favorite).

I also have chocolates from three gourmet chocolatiers (Pierre Marcolini, Neuhaus, and Wittamer) that I intend to savor slowly over the next two weeks.