Month: May 2016

We finally made it to Brussels, our first stop on our journey! We were welcomed as we exited the Eurostar by 4 very large armored military vehicles making it known that everything was very protected. It took us a little bit of time to figure out which train to get on. We even wandered to the wrong part of the station and people started talking to us in French as if we knew something. All of this while we wandered around aimlessly in search of our train. But we found a place to ask someone and he pointed us in the right direction. It wasn’t a long trip and we were checking into our first hotel and experienced the tiny elevators in Europe, they really aren’t meant for big groups of people. So we got to our room and put our stuff down and even though the bed was very inviting, we were exhausted, we were set to do some exploring.

We went right to Grand Place, an incredible square with some amazing architecture. I don’t really know how to describe it other than that it took my breath away. As we first walked into there I really could not believe how amazing it is. Just a spectacular sight of old buildings built in a style you just don’t see in the US. Of course lining this square was the chocolate shops (and for some reason a starbucks…they are everywhere). Yummy! The best way to celebrate my wife’s birthday was with chocolate, waffles and some belgian beer, we got all 3. All of it was just delicious. Going to a restaurant was a very different experience though. It was definitely a more relaxed place and the waiter kind of ignored you unless you called for him. It was weird not seeing a tip line on the bill as well.

After dinner we got some aforementioned waffles from a little shop and they were so delicious. I have had a lot of waffles in my day and these were something completely different. They were sweet but not too sweet and just the perfect amount of fluffy and crispy. Man they were awesome!

Brussels really was a fun quick stop. Also we never felt unsafe in Brussels even with the terrorists attacks having happened so recently. I’m sure the many armed police and military walking around everywhere helped with that. But it was a great first night celebrating my wife and by the end of walking around and enjoying the sites and delectables, it was time to head off to bed. We had done it, stayed up all day and we were ready for a good nights sleep, cause in the morning the next adventure begins.

As we arrived into Heathrow, I was expecting a couple of things. The first was that we were going to have to wait in a long line to go through customs and because we are Americans it would go quick. Well the first thing as we got in was like a mile long walk as the pilot parked our plane in the back of the parking lot. This helped get over the 10 hours of sitting though and we quickly learned that even though we had awesome bags they were still a little heavy. Well we make it to the “Border Control” area and almost everyone on our flight goes to the EU Passport area and almost no one goes to the Non-EU area! Woohoo!! Very exciting, this is going to take much less time than I thought it would. We were on a tight schedule, we had 3 hours from the time our plane landed to get to the Eurostar and go to Brussels.

We get to our turn in line and we go to the border control guy and hand him our slip that tells him why we are traveling and where we are staying and for how long. Well, we were technically only going to be in the UK for 3 hours. This made him give us a very weird look. I guess this wasn’t super normal. He then tells us that he is giving us a travel visa and if we don’t leave the country in 24 hours we will be deported. “OK sir, sounds good,” I said as I was thinking, “Now we really have to make our train.” As he is stamping our passports someone comes up in the line next to us and I think, man, I recognize that voice. I look up and it is Will Arnet! What! Crazy! Gob is right there next to us! Pretty darn cool to see a celebrity as you are getting your passports stamped.

That is done and we make our way to the Heath Bar Express (it is really called Heathrow Express but I was tired and kept calling it that and doesn’t a heath bar just sound good). Anyways that is an awesome train, into London in 15 minutes! We just had to go Paddington to St Pancras and then we are off to Belgium. So we Minded the Gap for our first time as we got on a circle line train to St Pancras! This is where we would get the first taste of heavy security. Lots of armed guards were around as we got to the Eurostar line, which we were too early for, oops. Guess I didn’t really need to worry about being late. So we meandered around, got some snacks and then got back in line. Oh boy was this a fiasco.

Line was long, but that was expected, especially with the Brussles bombing happening 5 days before we left. It would have been fine but the X-ray machines stopped working right before we were about to go through them, so we had to wait while we were carrying our stuff because it was too jam packed to take off our backpacks. Also the French/Belgian people behind us were being super rude and pushing us, ugh, we couldn’t go anywhere. The line finally gets moving and the French lady behind us reaches underneath me to grab a bin when she could have just been patient and waited. Just bothersome when you have had almost no sleep for 36 hours. We get through the X-ray, but my wife’s bag gets selected “randomly” to be searched. Her bag has a butterfly patch on it, the butterflies on it are yellow and pink, they must have been scared of the menacing butterflies. Then the guy empties out the entire bag that we had just packed to perfection. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but it is my wife’s 30th birthday the day we landed and this is happening. Well that ridiculousness ends and we are finally into the waiting area. Shortly after our train finally comes and we are on our way to Brussels.

Day 1 will be split in two, maybe three parts because it was such a long day. This first part started at work. I work at a church and we left on Easter Sunday, or the Super Bowl for us. So it was a very busy and tiring morning, which is what I had hopped for because I wanted to be exhausted by the time we got on our plane. You see I have a problem, I just can’t sleep on planes. It doesn’t matter how smooth or bumpy a flight it is, or even how tired I am, I just can’t sleep on planes. This time though I was determined to get some sleep so our first day wasn’t a complete waste of exhaustion. My secret weapon was going to be two fold; first we woke up very early to try to be as tired as possible by our 5:30pm flight and second, melatonin.

We board our plane and the “first world problems” start. First is, I am a tall man and I thought I might have more leg room than domestic flights. Nope, I was wrong, economy is economy no mater where you fly. Also, the entertainment systems were out (for like the first 30 minutes of the flight) which was a bummer. Lastly, and of course the worst thing, we realized about an hour into our flight that the air vents over our seats weren’t working. All of this made it hard to get totally comfortable. Of course, the melatonin never kicked in either, ugh.

Long story short, sleeping on a plane just isn’t going to happen for me without a couple of things, like first class accommodations and probably some prescription sleep aids. Again the lack of air vents didn’t help. It was like a 10-15 degree difference from my window seat to the aisle of the plane. There was one good thing for this nervous flier though and that was how smooth the flight was. It was the smoothest plane flight ever! Also big props go out to Virgin Atlantic! Even with these issues they were awesome, so chipper and happy and the voice over lady was hilariously overly British. Which even made the British folks next to us chuckle.

Before we knew it we were down and in England!