Brussels (Belgium)

(Please note: Im using a very stange keyboard so my punctuation may be different than usual... For example, I cant find the apostrophe key and I cant figure out how to use the exclamation point... not to mention that a number of letters are not where they usually are, which means this is taking a long time and is very irritating... lol)

After another lovely breakfast on our boat hostel, with the same Canadian couple, we packed up our bags (not hard to do when your room is so small) and headed off to the train station. Im glad we checked out where our platform was yesterday so that it was pretty easy today. Our trip was to take two and a half hours but due to engine trouble it took approximately 30 minutes longer. The train was comfortable though and I had the nicest chat with an elderly man across the row who has travelled the world. The number of places he has been is amazing. He is probably in his 70s and is currently on a four month journey with his wife. They are from Australia (most people we tend to meet are Australian) and they just got into Amsterdam after exploring some of the desert states and a journey from west to east coast Canada. He had lots of ideas for our trip and said we had planned a great one. He even said that one of his top five experiences from ALL his travels is Cinque Terre or Five Villages in Italy; one of the places we are heading(exclamation point). Needless to say he was a very interesting man to talk to and it helped the time go by.

Once we arrived to Brussels Central Station we had to get another train to the North station... as easy as it sounds, and in retrospect it was pretty easy; the idea of changing trains in a place where not all trains stop at every station and nothing is in English, is a little daunting... but, I just asked someone and we were good to go. Getting off the train and following some shoddy directions to the hotel is something quite different. Jeff and I are quickly learning that we are not fans of big cities and prefer the smaller ones. We picked a direction and followed it until our major travelling pet-peeve hit the ceiling... I dont know if we are super organized or what back home, but street signs at every corner just makes sense to me, not every few corners or on the side of some building in some alley way. Not helpful(exclamation point).

We stopped in some large business building and a very kind women pulled out a map (because our map didnt have our location on it... go figure) and got us going in the right direction. We were only minutes away from the hotel but without knowing that we could have been on Mars.

Our hotel is a little dirty but it is substantially bigger (and yet not all that big) than our boat hostel room; the bathroom itself is larger than our boat hostel room; what does THAT tell you? I could put the tips of both of my middle fingers on each wall in that room(exlamation point).

We quickly showered and grabbed all the dirty laundry that had been accumulating for a few days and headed out to the local laundrymat. It wasnt easy to figure out or cheap either. We had to ask someone for help. So far, Belgium has very little English and although this is hard sometimes, we do feel very lucky that English is our native language because of its usage worldwide.

We managed to get our laundry washed AND dried (although some of my things look a little smaller but Im too afraid to try them on right now) and also pick up some groceries for our breakfast and lunch tomorrow as we plan to take the train to Bruges; it is supposed to be a beautiful Medieval town, even though touristy.

We just got back from a super cheap dinner at some little Lebonese cafe beside our hotel and are now about to relax.

This blog has taken me way too long to write so Im going to stop here.

Until next time, thanks for reading(exclamation point).

(P.S. If I were to write the above sentence using the keyboard as I usually would, it would look like this:

Until next ti,e; thqnks for reqding9exlq,qtion point0:

... lol)