May 25 - London and Brugge

"Coffee, coffee, coffee.", the little voice kept whispering in my ear. Looking out our fourth-floor window, London was just waking up and already the sidewalks were full of people scurrying off to work and the streets themselves were clogged with what appears to be a perpetual traffic-jam.

If you want to drive your car into London, I understand that you have to pay a daily "congestion tax". I don't know why people would even try driving here. Every street reminds me of the worst freeway at rush hour.

Because of that, there are a lot of bicycles in town and everyone rides them, from students to businessmen in their suits and their briefcases on the back. Throughout town are collections of 20 or 30 blue bicycles with the Barclay's Bank logo on them. These are free for a half-hour and cost 1 Pound to rent for 24 hours. We saw a lot of people using them. (I think that you need to have a European-style chip and pin type Visa to check them out, though.)

We were walking, though; out of our room by seven, down Grays Inn Road to the Starbucks in the shopping court. We got online and I updated our blog while Kathy just made a dent in her email. We helped an American couple get online (the registration form asks for county, but actually wants the state from those of us in the US.) An Australian woman trying to get hooked up with her iPad heard us talking and had the same problem. Unfortunately, the registration form didn't give her any hint as to what to put for the "county".

Two hours and two Venti coffees and a morning bun for me, a regular coffee and a turkey sandwich for Kathy, we were rushing back to our hotel to grab our bags and make our train connection on the Eurostar at St. Pancras. (I had misread our departure time as 10:30, instead of 10:57, so we were in a bit of a rush.)

Under the Channel
We bought our Eurostar tickets in the States through RailEurope. (I think that's the only way you can get them here...uh, there). You print out your ticket at home and supposedly use the little bar-code in the corner to check in. St Pancras is absolutely huge, and it wasn't at all apparent where to check in, so we asked a very helpful gentleman, who told us that unfortunately the RailEurope bar-codes don't actually work in their machines.

He took us over to a booth where they checked our tickets by hand (which only took a minute or two) and then put us in a line for an airport-style security check. (You don't have to remove your shoes and belt, though, and you don't go through the side-scan-radar machine, so it's not quite as intrusive.)

Because of my mistake, we were about a half-hour early. The lounge was completely filled, but that was because the London-Paris train was leaving at 10:30. After those passengers went up the escalators to their train, the waiting area was mostly deserted. Kathy read and I wandered around. There was an ATM machine that dispensed Euros, so I used my Bank of America ATM to get some out. Well, I tried to get some out. It just kept denying my transaction. (Yesterday I got our Pounds using our Teacher's Credit Union card and that went just fine.)

I wasn't worried, of course, but Kathy was a nervous wreck. (For those of you who don't know us that well, that's a joke, folks.)

Finally, our train was called at 10:40 and we joined the line up the escalator to the platform. Because each car has it's own entrance, boarding is much faster than on an airplane. By 10:57, the Eurostar was pulling away from the station.

Our car was mostly filled with a group of American high-school study-abroad students along with their teachers. I don't know what school they were from, but all the boys were wearing ties and everyone was very well-behaved. We sat across from an American post-graduate student named Amanda, who was on here way to Ghent to a conference where she was going to present a paper on a Russian author. She is a PhD student in Leeds, but her father is in the US navy, so she got to travel around the world growing up.

The Eurostar itself is very fast and very quiet. You go through several tunnels on the way, so we were surprised when we pulled into a station and the loudspeaker announced, "Arriving at Calais". There was no announcement at all that "you're about to go under the English Channel".

An hour before we were scheduled to arrive at Brussels, everyone around us started standing up and getting their luggage. We asked Amanda and she said, "This is Brussels". We didn't know about the time change.

Brussels to Brugge
I the Brussels station, we needed to purchase our train tickets to Brugge as well as a ticket to Paris for Friday. I waited for a ticket agent and when one was free, walked up to the counter. He directed me to the very clearly written instructions (in English) about taking a number at the machine by the door. (I felt kind of like some of my students: read the instructions!).

After we got our ticket, and our number was called, we went to the agent and found that we were in the wrong ticket area. The one we had chosen was for international trains leaving today. We had to go to another room for local trains (to Brugge), and yet a third room for international trains leaving in the future.

This time, though, we knew what to expect, so we got our numbers, waited a few minutes, and got our tickets (55 Euro round-trip to Brugge and 160 Euro one-way to Paris). Our Brugge tickets could be used at any time, but we decided we had better get started, since it was already 2:45.

We found the platform, but it wasn't obvious which train was going to Brugge. Two other couples (from Britain and South Africa) were also waiting, though, and they helped us get on the train, which was running about 15 minutes late. Once on the train, we discovered that we actually need to change trains again in Ghent. We waited another fifteen minutes or so for the next train and by 4:00 we were at the Brugge train station buying bus tickets for the center of town.

In Brugge

"Brugge is like a fairy tale."--Ralph Finnes

Arriving in the famous Market Square at 4:15 it actually seemed a lot more like Disneyland: very, very crowded. We got off the bus and pulled out our map. Our hotel (the Patritius) is an 1830s mansion, converted into a 16-room, family-run hotel. We easily walked the four blocks from Market Square, and were shown to our third-floor room overlooking the city. It was a beautiful room as you can see.


Our first order of business was to get some money. Elvi, the owner, circled some of the ATMs in the city and we set out. The first one we tried rejected my Credit Union ATM. Kathy was beside herself (Ha ha!). But the one across the street worked just fine. The secret appears to be looking for the Visa/Mastercard logo on the ATM.

Once that was out of the way, it was time for a snack. In Brugge, that means only one thing: Flemish (not French) fries. We stopped by a Fritture recommended in our guidebook and ordered a medium fries and a couple of sodas. The sauces (we got the special: half ketchup and half mayonnaise) are extra.


The fries came covered with diced onions and were heavenly. Think McDonald's fries before they switched to eco-friendly oil, only two or three times as tasty.


We spent the rest of the evening wandering around town. Tomorrow we'll get out our guidebook and "see the sights". Today we just wanted to wander and enjoy. Amazingly, by 6:00 those thousands of tourists had disappeared, and the city looked much more like the medieval village it had really was.


By 8:00 we were ready for dinner. We ate at The Flemish Pot, a restaurant specializing in Flemish food. Mussels are the real specialty in this area of Belgium, but neither of us care for them. There were also a lot of Eel dishes which went beyond our comfort zone. We both had the Flemish Beef stew which was great. Much sweeter than our beef stew; no carrots or potatoes in the stew. Instead, you get a mound of fries and some great applesauce.


The dinner was great but I forgot to bring the access code so we had to cut our meal short to get back to the hotel before the doors were locked for the night at 10:00 PM. That gave us time to have a nice soak in the giant tub, read a bit, and turn out the lights by midnight.