The Benelux Portion of our Trip


That would be Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg

Belgium
Our first stop was in Belgium, in the lovely town of Overijse to be precise. Yes, this is where I go home to (unfortunately-although I like our house, and our neighbours the sheep)

I had the honour of flying to Belgium by myself on the Sabena/Delta flight-I really hate these two airlines. Meanwhile, Yoriko and Eugene took a very convoluted flight stopping over in London, to come a good eight hours later, although we left at nearly the same time. Naturally, we did the mandatory Brussels tour. We walked through town, saw the manequin-pis, the Grand Place, etc. And then, for my favourite part, the exciting tour of Waterloo, complete with a run up the pyramid-we skipped the exciting movies this time though. Well, Eugene and I got about 3/4 of the way to the top, before were reduced to a crawl, and then we looked at the beautiful battlefield. Things did pick up though. (In Belgium? I know, that is hard to believe, but it is occasionally possible). The next day, we made a trip to Brugges. This was our first trip on the train-and the first of many worries about train tickets, but no problems were experienced. The city was lovely, I tested my new bankomat card-it worked. (I treasure this memory, it was never to function again). So we saw the sights in Brugges, namely we walked up numerous towers and took lots of pictures and saw the various canals. On the way back, we started what was soon to become an art form, sleeping on the train. And the next day:

The Netherlands


We made a day trip to Amsterdam. This was the first time I got to use my pass-another source of worry. But there were no problems. One small problem though, was the soccer match between Juventus Milan and one of the Spanish teams. Yes, the city was overcrowded with rambunctious soccer fans, as only soccer fans know how to be. Thus Amsterdam was very different from how I last saw it-during a math team competition. We spent a lot of time in the historical museum, and then followed a walking tour from a guide book, and successfully missed seeing just about everything else. This is because everything closed. And how could I forget, it was in Amsterdam that we first experienced the beauty of the international train line. Yes, we had a problem. We wanted to go to Paris. So did everyone else, and thus our reserved tickets were for midday. Ordinarily, this is not a problem, except if one wants to find a place to sleep at night that isn't outrageously expensive. So we decided to try to change out tickets and go by way of somewhere else. Since we didn't know where somewhere else was yet, however, we weren't successful in changing our tickets. More on that later. Back to our walking tour. Our walk took us past lots of canals and churches that were closed, and finally through the red light district. That was a bit awkward. Then, back to the train station, where we had some wonderful icecream before boarding the train. This was another amusing part of the journey, foreshadowing things to come. We, along with several others, though our train went directly to Brussels. However, at Rosendaal, the border station, the ticket collector told us otherwise. Our train was on the next set of tracks. This prompted a mad rush of putting on shoes, grabbing backpacks and running to the next train, which left shortly afterwards. This train was even more fun. While Yoriko and Eugene slept, I got to watch my neighbour draw them in her sketch book. She particularly liked Eugene, she even got out a bottle of water, so that she could paint in all of the shadows. Naturally, I had a very hard time restraining my laughter, but I didn't want to spoil the fun, which made Yoriko very curious. So that was our Amsterdam episode.

Back to Belgium and off to Luxembourg


And we were back, ready to finally start the real part of the journey. But there was that minor problem of train tickets...We decided to go to Paris by way of Luxembourg and make a stop in Reims in between. However, we still had our Paris reservations and we still hoped for last minute cancellations, so we made an early morning trip to the train station, to find out. We got there 15 minutes before the train to Luxembourg left and the man at the ticket counter was slow to say the least. AFter establishing that no tickets were available to Paris, unless we wanted to pay much to much for them, we cancelled our reservation-this took a very long time, and ran up to the train. Running for trains was to become a very special experience. And thus started the four hour trip to Luxembourg. We also became very familiar with slow trains. I have to admit, we only spent an hour there. Essentially, we got off the train, visited the ticket office, realised that if we wanted to go to Reims, we'd have to take two different trains and it would take an additional four hours, so we decided to spend the night. Until we realised that the train to Paris left at five in the morning. So that plan was quickly vetoed, and off we went. And that was our Benelux experience.

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