Back to Brussels

The next morning, church bells woke me.  I strolled downstairs to grab breakfast at a cafe.

                                 [Oh yeah -- that's a delicious mushroom omlette]

In contrast to the prior day's bustle, on this Sunday morning, Namur looked like a ghost town.  The sound of my boots hitting the cobblestone pavement echoed everywhere.  It was a little eerie. 

I caught my train and headed back to Brussels.  While on the train, I talked to an amazingly beautiful girl from Namur in my broken French.  She spoke even less English than I did French, but again, she could understand me well enough.  It was good times...

Back in Brussels, I wandered around a bit more and took some more random pics. 

[Yes, that is a "Chi-Chi's."  What's a "Chi-Chi's, you ask?"  Only one of the most horrible Tex-Mex chains known to man.  I ate at one outside of Philly a few years back and got food poisioning.  Not sure why this place was operating in Brussels.  Ugh.]

Of course, no visit to Brussels would be complete without eating some mussels...

I spent the remainder of my time hanging in pubs, and just enjoying my time there.  One night, while I was at a pub, I was chatted up by a 70 year old Belgium guy.  We talked for probably close to an hour.  He spoke some English, but insisted that I speak French.  When I did, he scolded me for my bad accent -- he said that my French was grammatically correct and that my vocabulary was fine, but my accent was so thick that he couldn't understand me all that well.  It was comical -- on the bright side, for enduring his criticisms, he bought me a drink.  Hehe...

So, having felt like I accomplished what I wanted to see and do in Brussels, it was time to catch my train to Amsterdam.  Quick note about the trains.  For some reason I had it in my head that the trains would be really crappy -- I guess I figured that they would be like the El or the subways in the States.  Quite the contrary is true -- in fact, the train I took to Amsterdam had nice seats than any flight I've ever taken.  Why doesn't the US do this again?  It's so easy to catch the train and comfortable to take the trains...It would traveling between the major cities in Texas soooo much more enjoyable.  I guess it just makes too much sense to ever happen (and American and Southwest would never allow it)...