Day 1: Amsterdam and Brussels and Paris, oh my!

With no internet on my computer in England, I wasn’t successful in updating my blog. To give you a brief idea, here was the rundown of my week:

Skate, eat, meeting, eat, ref, eat, sleep.

Repeat for 7 days.

Now that you’re caught up…

Nashama and I easily found each other in the Amsterdam airport and we boarded the train for a 3 hour ride to Brussels. First order of business, water closet (bathroom), which had a 0.50 Euro fee. I always find the bathroom entrance fee a bit weird.

My French is okay, not great. I can talk in present tense, but definitely not in future or past tense. For example, I can easily ask for a crepe with nutella and banana (je voudrais un crepe avec nutella et banana s’il vous plait) but I can’t say tomorrow we are going to the Eiffel tower. I’m pretty sure sometimes I also mix up the verbs “am” and “have”. But, although pretty embarrassing, usually I can muddle through the day with my broken French.

So, when trying to find baggage check, I told a women, “Today we walk. I don’t want to walk with my clothes. Is there a place I can move my clothes for 1 day”? Then, the problem is that people respond and that’s where I really lose them. They just talk too fast for me to comprehend. So I just smile and nod, say merci, and walk away no more informed than I was when I started.  Nashama just laughs.

Outside of the station, we went to the Grande Place which is this beautiful square with huge imposing buildings that have amazing architecture. A lot of the buildings have gold trim, which makes them sparkle in the sunlight (not that we saw any).
We headed to a café for lunch. I had delicious sausage and mashed potatoes, and an amazing cherry beer. Nashama had a warm goat cheese salad and a bottle of water that cost as much as my beer.  Sadly, the weather is not great. It’s really cold (50 degrees) with wind and rain. Even though we looked at the forcast, I don’t think we packed warm enough clothes. We were freezing most of the day.

This part of Brussels is about 100% tourists so we walked around tons of chocolatiers and souvenir shops. Of course, we had a Belgian waffle with nutella and some french fries, both of which were amazing.

Next we went to the most famous statue in Brussels called Manekin Pis, which is an underwhelming bronze statue of a young naked boy urinating into a fountain. Odd. Around the city they have also have a statue of a young girl urinating and a dog lifting its leg. I guess they’re equal opportunity.

I’ve decided to keep a running tally of how many crepes/waffles/anything with nutella I can eat in 1 week. I’m betting on at least 1 per day, which puts me in the 6-8 range. So delicious.

So, now we’re back at the Brussels train station waiting for our train to Paris. Nashama is beyond tired (she’s been up for almost 27 hours at this point) and her ankles…let’s just say they’re a bit swollen and resemble what I had for lunch.

Our plans for tomorrow include….actually…we’re not sure. Tomorrow is going to be our only rain-free day here so I think it’ll be up the Eiffel tower and maybe a boat tour down the Seine River so we can enjoy the sunshine.

We had a great first day! To be continued…

Dessert total: 1