Day 15: Not quite a Nightmare

Today's trip didn't end up being a nightmare as we had first thought the night before. We arrived at the Parid Gare du Nord station to find out that it was easy to get another ticket for a train to Belgium. All it took was to pay a 25% fee of our original booking fee to rebook. We even got an earlier train to Belgium than we had first planned. So things were looking up.

The train ride from Paris to Belgium was only an hour and a half. Quite quick considering we were in another country. No passport checks were made again as we crossed borders.

We arrived in Belgium at around 9:45am. However, we didnt get to our hostel till about 11am. What should have taken a 20 minute trip to our hostel from the main station took us 60 minutes. Belgium is quite a small city and what seems like a long way on the map is actually very close. So instead of going down a street near the station we walked down to almost the other end of the city with our backpacks trying to find the hostel. Keep in mind that we only managed at most 4 hours sleep the night before.

Finally as we arrived at the hostel (called Sleep Well) we checked in. However, this hostel also had a lock out time and we were unable to go to our room. Instead we put our bags in the luggage room and went for a walk. The Sleep Well is much larger than the Young and Happy. It is a Youth Hostel and Hotel all in one. We obviously stayed in the Youth Hostel part. I would definitely recommend this to anyone. Its clean and its friendly.

As we tiredly walked to past time we found our way to Belgium's national icon, The Manneken Pis. This icon is a little boy taking a leak in a pond. Like the Mona Lisa its much smaller than expected. Nonetheless, people were crowding around it taking photos. So we did the same.

Pissing in public seems to be a common theme here in Belgium. On some streets there are open air cubicals where males can take a quick couple of seconds to empty the tank. Its bizzare but it must work for them.

We got back at 3pm to go to our room. The boys went to sleep but I desperately needed to do some washing. I finished washing my clothes after 2 hours. Most of this time was working out how to dry my clothes as the dryer didn't seem to be working. So I brought my semi damp clothes back to the room and hung them up in various spots.
Asher and Pettsy were still a sleep so I decided to get some sleep for an hour or so. By the time we all woke up it was 8am the next morning. We all had massive sleeps. I think we needed it though. It was a big day.

Tim


Public Urinals. Seems to work.