Day 1: Brussels

Tom and I finally left Paris yesterday morning. I'll post later about our last week there and our last tours etc...I just wanted to try to keep up with our travels for once. We had breakfast at St Christophers hostel in Paris amongst the celebration about the American election. All of the travellers were pretty pleased. It was a really miserable day yesterday to lug all our stuff through the Metro system to the Gare du Nord. The train ride was surprisingly short and we spent it reading our guides to Brussels. We didn't do anything remarkable yesterday, just wandered around the city. It feels totally different to all the other cities we've visited so far. Parts feel really old and beautiful like Paris, but thats all mixed in with newer stuff, its not quite as neat and tidy. We found what has to be my favourite street in the whole world. It was a tiny little cobbled road with nothing but restaurants on it, and because there is so much competition the advertising is intense. They all lit up brightly, had giant menus outside, and staff members trying to convince us to eat there...Tom literally got stopped several times by people offering us meals or free drinks or special deals. My favourite one was 'It's free for the princess but double the price for you!' hehe. I wanted to go to that one :( There's also a really cool skyscraper here that lights up at night...each window is like a separate pixel that changes colour so they have text and pictures on it at night.

It's a much nicer day today so hopefully we can see some more of the city. We were going to head to Bruges but then decided that would prevent us seeing Brussels properly. We did have waffles last night as we were wandering after dinner - photographic evidence to follow.

Just to keep you guys updated on the travel plans, here they are:
5-7 Brussels
7-11 Amsterdam
11-13 Rotterdam
13-19 Tom in Hannover
13-15 Amanda in Hamburg
15-18 Amanda in Dublin
19-21 Salzburg
21- Kaprun

Will post photos as soon as I can - I'm back to the old story of not being able to connect the camera to internet kiosks.