Day 1 - New York to Brussels!

We arrived at JFK and bought the most expensive wrap ($9) while we waited to board our plane.  The Brussels Air plane itself was fairly comfortable – with each seat having a touch screen in front of it with movies, TV shows and games.  Unfortunately, my seat was broken and wouldn’t stay reclined by itself without me leaning on it.  Fortunately, I did get to watch “The Iron Lady” which I had been wanting to see.  

As we were getting ready to land, some guy a few rows in front of us pulled his large bag out of the overhead compartment and put it on the floor in front of him.  When the flight attendant told him to put it back, he refused.  Two flight attendants finally took the bag and put it back up for him.  We landed in Belgium at about 7am, which is 1am NY time.  From there we found our luggage and headed for the train.  Incidentally we saw the man who wouldn’t put his bag up being detained by airline officials who were searching it.  Good! There was a train leaving 3 minutes after we got our tickets, and we made it without a minute to spare.  As usual in Europe, no one collected our tickets.  Why do we keep buying them?  

David on the train to Brussels from the airport

We arrived in Brussels but then had a difficult time finding our hotel from the train station.  We went in the wrong direction several times.  When we finally got there, of course, our room wasn’t ready – it was only about 8 am.  So, we dropped our luggage off and headed to the Atomium.   

Outside the Atomium

Inside the Atomium

This is a cool place, originally built, I think, for the 1958 World’s Fair.  We took the elevator up and had amazing views from the top.  After exploring that, we headed over to “Mini Europe” where they have models of buildings and cities from all over Europe.  The detail was unbelievable.  David and I especially enjoyed seeing places represented that we’d seen “for real”.   

Mini Europe (this and next 5 pictures)

 Back near our hotel, we stopped for lunch and had some lovely Croque Monsieur and Chicken at an outdoor café.  

 Then we walked around the neighborhood and found an “oriental bakery”.  We bought some interesting treats here.  

Finally, our hotel room was ready and we checked in.  The gentlemen at the front desk, who had some kind of European accent, informed us that he was from Boston.  I didn’t believe him at first, but he knew too many details to be lying!  Finally, after being awake for well over 24 hours, we crashed for a while.  

After our naps, we met up with our traveling partners, Toby and Norman, from Alaska.  We took turns on the hotel’s computer with free wifi to let everyone know we’d arrived safely.  Then we took off on a walk around the area.  We began with the Grand Place.  This is a magnificent plaza with beautiful old buildings, many of which are painted with gold leaf.  Some of the buildings are 600 years old.  Dave and I had walked through here earlier in the day and had seen two people dressed as polar bears sitting outside one of the windows with a sign saying “Save the Arctic”.  There were some reporters around then as well.   

The Grand Place (this and next 2 pictures)

We then took our time just walking up and down different streets just seeing the sights of Brussels.   Finally it was time to eat.  We walked down several streets with one restaurant after another and the “hosts” were trying to lure us into their restaurants.  We finally chose one and had a nice but very long dinner.  After dinner, a walk back to the same bakery we were at before and bought more goodies.  In my opinion, they looked better than they tasted.  As I write this, it’s 7:30 PM and we’re all crashing!