In Wales we are used to seeing place names in two languages - but come to Brussels and suddenly you see it in three. Some places use the English (Brussels) others the French (Bruxelles) and yet others the Flemish (Brussel) - even the railway station has three names, the two on the sign:
and Brussels-South as it said on our ticket.
As someone who was never able to spell Brussels (always missing the second of the s's), it is a relief to find I could have pretended I was aiming for one of the alternatives!
Paddington to St. Pancras
Before I go any further with the challenges of language, time to go back to where we left off in the last blog post - the point where we had arrived at Paddington.
From our platform on Paddington, and without any friendly Peruvian bears 😉, we were able to walk over the modern concourse that connects the railway station with the underground. Unlike the old days when you had to come back on yourself for the Hammersmith and City line and walk to the opposite end of the station for the Circle line, for the last five or six years it has been possible to catch both Circle and H&C trains from the same Underground platform, making the journey from Paddington to Kings Cross/St. Pancras easy with trains every few minutes. A circle line train was coming in as we got to the platform, so we jumped on board and were in St. Pancras by 10.10am.
My years of having a father who was always last minute (or late, as I like to call it!) has led to me being the exact opposite. Yes, we had arrived at 10.10am for a check in that opened at 11.15am, but better that than the opposite!
I can't spend time in St. Pancras, as modern and impressive as it now looks, without being taken back to that great novel by Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - in it Adams suggests that St. Pancras is "an area where terrible things happen to people, to buildings, to cars, to trains… You could have a cheap car radio fitted while you waited, and if you turned your back for a couple of minutes, it would be removed while you waited as well. Other things you could have removed while you waited were your wallet, your stomach lining, your mind and your will to live." Naturally, in Adams' mind, St. Pancras was the home of the uncared for Norse Gods - an idea Neil Gaimen builds on in an American context in his book (and tv series) American Gods.
It is now much nicer than in Adams' day! We stopped in a Starbucks and had a coffee each
while I loaded up pictures and Drew read, meaning we were ready to check-in when it opened at 11.15am.
Eurostar
We arrived at the entrance to the Eurostar terminal at 11.16am and went through tickets, case and person scanning (and neither of us set the beepers off this time) and both outbound UK and in bound EU passport control by 11.25am.
It is very noticeable that the passport area and queues have the effect of reducing the seating space in the terminal - one of the costs of the idiocy that is Brexit!!
Boarding for the 1:01pm train to Brussels begins at 12.30. Our carriage is the second one at the top of the travelator.
We booked Standard Premier to get the benefit of the light lunch and soft drinks they offer in this class. The seats are really comfortable and they even have a mirror!! I couldn't resist a mirrored shot of myself.
The train pulled away at exactly 1.01pm as scheduled. Let's hope the whole of the journey over the next three weeks is this easy!
At 1.36pm we head into the tunnel. It is of course now 2.36 as the clocks go forward the hour as we travel under the channel.
At 2.40pm (which was 1.40pm a few minutes ago!) lunch is served.
Drew opted for the Suffolk chicken, Caesar sauce, mangetout, carrot, cabbage and red onion remoulade with a bread roll and Strawberry yoghurt cake, water and a coke
I went with the Tomato, mozzarella, caramelised onion and pesto tart, pesto pasta salad with sundried tomato and spinach, bread roll and Strawberry yoghurt cake with sparking water - Drew swopped my cake for his bread roll as he is so kind to me. The meal was completed by a coffee.
Coming out of the tunnel we crossed along Northern France stopping at Lille
and from there into Belgium arriving in Brussels at 4.18pm - 14 minutes later than we were due.
Brussels
In many of the cities on this visit we are staying in an IHG (International Hotel Group) hotel. In this case the Holiday Inn Express Brussels - Grand-Place on the Rue Du Cypres.
We left Brussels Midi station and immediately realised that the Tram stop, we knew we needed to travel on to four stops to the hotel, wasn't outside the station as it appeared on the map, but accually underneath the station. Effectively for this part of its journey the Tram had become a subway train!
So we went back into the station and followed the T (for Tram) sign down two levels and caught the Tram to the De Brouckere station and we could see the Holiday Inn Express sign as we came out of the station.
We were welcomed and shown to our room in the eves at the top of the hotel (the room you can see with the arch at the top of the photo above. It was 4.50pm and we were able to settle in and have a brief rest before going out for the evening. It has been 12 hours since we got up, but the journey has gone so remarkably smoothly we can hardly believe it.
The evening will be the topic of the next blog post.
