My trip started with a 3:15 wake up call. Yes, that's correct, not a typo. Had to be at the train station by 4:20 for the train to London. No quick trains that early, so that was a touch over an hour ride. Then I walked over to the St. Pancras station where the Eurostar leaves from. It was probably quicker to walk (less than 10 minutes) than wait for the Tube train to come. Eurostar says specifically that check-in is minimum of 30 minutes before departure, and I'd read online some stories about people not being allowed to check-in after that. So I was pushing the 30 min deadline a little, but it turned out not being an issue at all, and you can't even board the train until 20 minutes before departure. The train was pretty darn comfortable, plenty of leg room, power outlet for the laptop, and no one in the seat next to me. We were delayed about 30 minutes due to a power supply issue in one section of the Chunnel, so that was too bad, but overall not a big deal at all.
As I was a little late, Adam was waiting for me, and we wound up walking to our hotel. We tried to find a free map, but were unsuccessful in the train station. The GPS took way too long to find satellites, and so we probably walked a little more than we should have. But we found the hotel, got a good map there, and dropped our bags off in our room.
Then we walked towards the city centre, with the intention of finding some food (I had been up for something like 7 hours at this point). After Adam practicing his French trying to get a locals recommendation for waffles we wound up in a place along the Royal Gallery where we both ordered Brussels style waffles. I got cherries on mine, and Adam had banana and chocolate or Nutella, can't remember. The Brussels style is crispier and less bread like than the other Belgian waffle, the Liege style, which we also tasted on Wednesday morning.
From there we continued to find the Grand Place, which was absolutely stunning. I'm not sure pictures really do it justice.
Then we wound up noticing a small alleyway and exploring down it to find a small old bar, and decided it was worthy of having a beer. First bar I'd been in in a loooong time that allowed smoking, and you could tell. The historic feel and appearance of the space made up for it I think.
Next up was Autoworld, a collection of historic cars. It was ok, plenty of pictures that I took, but to some extent I don't really know enough historically to appreciate a lot of these kinds of museums. The cars are definitely interesting to look at though. We continued the night by getting away from the touristy city center some to find a restaurant for some moules frites. We got them cooked in white wine, but the mustard sauce that was brought on the side stole the show. The place we found wound up being very good, though we did notice that 3 of the 4 other tables were all English speaking! Our nightcap was a few beers at the rather infamous Delirium Cafe. The bottle list is basically a catalog, and was honestly very hard to use. Though honestly you can't go too wrong with most of the list!
The beer that stood out the most from the first day was Adam's Rochefort 8 from the bar we just happened to stumble upon (Au Bon Vieux Tiemps). It might've just been the atmosphere and mood we were both in, but something about it was just absolutely perfect and wonderful.
I was trying to write one post, but I'm not gonna make it through the second day at this point, so I'll just split the post and finish up tomorrow.
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