London - Brussels

After having our little walk about in London, it was time to get to St Pancras to catch our train to Brussels! None of us has been to Brussels before as mentioned in my earlier post so we didn't know what to expect at all. 

After checking in, this is where we wait for our train. It would take approx 2 hours to get to Brussels

They had a little Charging Bar in there

Time to board our train. Isn't this just the prettiest train station you've seen? No? Maybe it's just me. Everything seemed pretty somehow. Yea, tourist.

We started to plan our route in the train, semangat. 

Yes, semangat. Even printed out the map to our Hotel, but we still couldn't find the hotel when we arrived Brussels. Fail. Well at least we made it near enough... :-/

Taking down shopping notes while in the train! Not gonna lose out ahem. Shopping is an important part of the itinerary :)

Perfect weather to start out our little voyage :D 

Crossing the border! According to me la. It could be some random river for all I know

The professional photographer checking his work

We took a little stroll a few carriages down just to pay the bar a little visit.

And that's me setting foot on Belgium soil, well sort of.

My traveling buddies :)

Bonjour Bruxxeles. They speak French and German here. Generally helpful people, I wouldn't say friendly, but at least helpful.

The terrace leading to our hotel room. Quaint little hotel (in the day), but come evening, you will start to see some skimpily dressed females/shemales roaming the streets outside, which was what made me begin to not really like Brussels. I mean, first impression, not summarizing Brussels.

So after we dropped off our bags and freshened up a lil, it was close to dinner time. We immediately left for the main attraction of Brussels, The Grand Place. It was about a 30mins slow walk journey. It wasn't that bad cos the weather was rather chilly, made it seem like a much shorter walk.

As we were walking, we smelt shit. Literally shit and wondered where it came from and this was the culprit, a shit pan,  out of no where. It was seriously out of no where, just by the sidewalk, in front of some offices... Hmm... Interesting.

Only dogs are allowed to poop here. Cats will be sent to kitty detention centre.

A sign that we are close to our destination, medieval looking buildings. 

Another sign, buskers. To tipu duit pelancong. :) But he was really good though.

And another. The kids around, that includes me, were trilled by what this guy was doing, huge bubbles! With just ropes, sticks and soap.

Drooling? Yea me too. Looks awfully good doesn't it. ;) Chocolates galore.

Other than chocolates, Belgium is famous for its beautiful hand made lace. They do everything by hand and do not believe in using machines. One small flower (the size of a fifty cents coin) could take up to 4 hours to make. 

This would probably take a few days?

And here we are. The Beautiful Grand Place. Pictures really don't do justice. 

Time for dinner, and we were hunting for good food deals. So we were walking down this street where all the restaurants had a €18 sign and we wanted to check out the menu cos it seemed like a pretty good deal. But before we could even walk down the street, this super friendly waiter and 'award winning marketing person' came up to Jon and promoted his restaurant saying how his restaurant is better than the others down the street and how it's not even worth our time walking. We insisted that we take a walk first and he refused to let us go. Then he was smart, he offered us free drinks. Not just any drinks, it's Champagne. Smart. 

Pretty good no? Started off our dinner with some fresh soft buns, starters (I had oysters), main meal (I had a huge a$$ paella while the rest had mussels and fries), dessert (waffles) and champagne, all for €18

Pretty glad we had our dinner here and tried all of Belgium's specialties

Sweet ending to the night. But other than The Grand Place, we really didn't know what else was there to do in Brussels, so we decided to pay Brugge a little visit the next day. 

Brugge is a city where some call it City of Love, where love birds go to. It is a short train ride out of Brussels, about 45 mins if I remember correctly. Brugge post to follow. :)