Today we'd be leaving Paris and travelling to Brussels on the Eurostar train. We had breakfast in the hotel.
When we checked out from the hotel just before 11am, the taxi was already waiting for us outside the hotel blocking traffic in the narrow one-way one-lane street.
We reached the Gare du Nord railway station at about 11:10am - more than an hour before our train was due to depart.
When the platform number was announced, there was the normal rush to board. Our carriage was near the end of the very long platform. It wasn't easy getting our heavy bags onboard. At least there was a break in the rain.
The train left on time at 12:21pm and reached Brussels on time at 1:44pm. Some kind people helped us getting our bags off the train.
The train was in fact two trains. As we walked along the platform at Brussels looking for a lift (to avoid the escalators), we noticed that they'd uncoupled the trains. The two trains would then go to different destinations.
We got a taxi van that was big enough to take our luggage but it ended up costing us 40 Euros for a ten minute trip. He wouldn't accept a credit card and insisted on cash. We concluded that we'd been ripped off.
Our room at the Thon Hotel Bristol Stephanie was ready. They'd given us a room on level 10 - the top level - and so we had a view of the city from the large (wet and slippery) balcony.
The room had a queen size double bed, work desk, safe, fridge, tea and coffee making, comfy chair, separate toilet (with hand basin), no carpet. The bathroom had a shower in the bath. Wifi was slow 2Mb/s down and 10 up.
At about 3:15pm, we heard some rowdy noise outside. It turned out there was a demonstration heading down the street (Avenue Louise) under surveillance by police. Their sign said "Truth and justice" in French. It seemed to be a pro-Palestinian rally.
At about 4pm, we went out for a walk. The street had trams running down the middle and the only way we could see to get to the other side seemed to be to use the underpass. After going down the stairs, we baulked when we saw the underpass was occupied by homeless people.
Further on, we went into a supermarket to buy a bottle of wine. Although all the French wine had corks (as usual), we found one Belgian wine that a screw top and so we decided to give it a try. The man behind the counter told us there was a pedestrian crossing further up the street so we could avoid the underpass.
So far Brussels looked rather drab and unattractive. Perhaps it would have been better on a warm sunny day. It didn't help that the streets were cluttered with rubbish as if there was a strike by garbage collectors.
By contrast, our hotel was bright, cheerful and tastefully decorated. The staff were very helpful and spoke good English. One of them gave us detailed advice on what we should go to see in the city tomorrow.
For dinner, we went to the hotel's restaurant. Our booking was for 7pm which is when the restaurant opened and when we left just after 8:30pm we were still the only people who'd been dining there except that there were other people at the bar.
My guess is that they have business meetings and conferences on weekdays and don't have too many tourists like us.
It was a delicious meal artistically presented. We shared a combination of salad and starters. I've noticed that in the restaurants we've been to in Europe, they use the term "starters" rather than "entrees" - possibly because Americans think that "entree" means main course.
We got chatting to our waiter. It turned out he came here from the Philippines 30 years ago and his children were born and raised here. His home back in the Philippines was in a mountainous area a long way from civilisation and had no transport or electricity.
It had been yet another interesting day to experience Europe.
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