Jumping trains in Brussels

Boy, if you think this blog is underbaked and underinformed in general, wait until you get a load of this post, which is just a quicko reflection on approximately... six hours in Brussels, I think? After the jump: using a train transfer to snoop around a city!

The Grand Place, Brussels. Do you think a lot of tourists make jokes about how it's not so grand? Those tourists are chumps, it's grand as HECK is how it is. But only I guess if you like pointy buildings and stuff. Anyway, how are you

I'd booked my Bruges-to-London trip early enough that the Eurostar turned out to be cheaper than even discount flights, and since I love few things more than taking a train instead of flying, I was all over this. What's nice about taking the Eurostar from Brussels instead of Paris is that you can select the "Any Belgian Station" ticket option, which basically means for a few Euro more than your Brussels-London trip, you get to connect to or from Brussels to any other Belgian city within 24 hours of your international trip. This meant that getting an early start out of Bruges on my travel day left me a full afternoon to poke around (cloudy, muggy) Brussels. It was fun! And about as much as I had the energy for, as eager and impatient as I was to see people in the UK who make me wildly happy!

Do Belgians have a sense of humor? Judging by this building-sized mural of Tintin it is hard to say. This was one of the major questions I hoped to investigate during my brief stay.

Really, with this little time in Brussels you can cover a lot of ground but you're not going to "do" much. I snagged lunch at a recommended bar near the Grand Place (tucked away in an awesome quarter full of used record shops and bookstores) and wandered the central footpaths for a bit before cutting up to the Belgian Comic Strip Center, a museum and library dedicated to comics like Tintin, Asterix, and numerous other Belgian-and-otherwise dailies. Grabbing a midafternoon waffle (get a liege waffle and don't put anything on it beyond the standard powdered sugar, truuuuust me, it's caramelly and yeasty and crunchy and pillowy and delicious), I scooted back to the train station and hopped my two-or-three-hour bullet to London. Magic!

While I didn't see my favorite statue in Belgium (the manhole tripping one, look it up) this "is it raining" fountain was pretty swell! Aw guys I think you do have a sense of humor potentially.

All told, three days in Belgium is hilariously brief to think I've learned anything, so let's not pretend I have. But I seen a piece, and I'd linger if given the chance, and well I guess you'd say I'm... I'm grateful?

Even the street art was great and hilarious! Get that garbage, you old school hunting type folk!

Up next: London! While I've already touched on Glasgow in this space (so good, such friends, many happiness) I was really happy to have it bracketed by London itself. I've always given the city somewhat short shrift timewise due to expense, but with about a week and a half total, and with the guidance of a truly excellent gal to show me what's what, I got a much better and more indulgent slice this time. So uhhh stay tuned for that I guess?

MAKING FRIENDS ON THE ROAD IS ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS TO TRAVEL LET'S ALL GO HANG OUT IN THE BRUSSELS MIDI STATION TO FIND SOME COOL AND UNUSUAL PEOPLEHORSES