Belgium

After we spent the first weekend of our trip in London, we embarked on our trip to Belgium. My Dad lives in Belgium and works on an American military base outside of Brussels. He's a clinician and does a lot of outreach and trainings about domestic violence on the base.

Anyway, we left from Waterloo station in London to catch the Eurostar. The Eurostar is a train that travels overland for most of the trip, but goes through the channel tunnel to pass under the English Channel on the way to the European mainland. We had decided to book first class tickets, because they were only a little bit more expensive. Travelling first class is so sweet.

The car that we were in wasn't very full and Aaron and I both had a window seat (our seats faced each other). Since we were travelling first class, we had a meal included. We were leaving in the morning, so we got brunch. Aaron had a vegetarian meal and I had a meat meal. We also got free beverages and free wine! Woohoo! The food was awesome and the service was great, too. I had a cheese omelette, chicken sausage, croissants, OJ, coffee, roasted potatoes and, of course, some wine. Aaron had all the same food, except that he had a roasted tomato instead of sausage (what a rip-off, right?).

The trip to Brussels only took about 2 and a half hours. We arrived at Brussels Midi at about 2:45pm. There was a train leaving for Soignies, the town closest to my Dad's house, at 3pm. After we asked the man at the information office which platform to head to, we zipped off to platform 18. I asked the conductor again if the train would stop in Soignies, just to be sure. Like I said, I don't speak French, so I just said, "Soignies?" and he nodded, so I figured we were in good shape.

The train to Soignies only took about 20 minutes, so it was a quick ride. In Belgium, if you have a Eurostar ticket, you can take a train anywhere within Belgium for free for your connecting train ride. I had told my Dad that we'd arrive between 3pm and 3:30pm, and he was supposed to pick us up. He has a bad track record for being late and mixing up dates, so I was a bit nervous that he wouldn't be there to get us.

At 3:15pm, he rolled into the train station parking lot in his Citroen 2 CV. We loaded our backpacks and Aaron jumped into the back seat and I sat in the front. I had forgotten how small the Citroen is!

My Dad lives in a small town in Belgium called Casteau. We stopped at a Lidl market (a small grocery store) to pick up a few snacks and then headed to my Dad's house. It is huge! His house had five bedrooms and is three stories tall. He lives there alone. His wife lives in London. (I know, it's a bit unorthodox, but it's par for the course.) His house is filled with furniture from around the world and other crap. He is a bit of a pack rat and usually has stacks of paper and boxes all over, but things looked tidy, so I could tell that he'd been working to make everything look presentable.

He showed us around the house and offered to let us use anything we wanted. In the bathroom, he had multiples of everything and actually had Xerox paper boxes full of things like travel sized shampoo, conditioner and soap that he had pilfered from various hotels. Yes, it's weird. I like to think of my Dad as eccentric.

After the house tour, we made dinner and then went for a walk. Casteau is a very small town, but we walked around and looked at the other houses and the town church. It was all very quaint and peaceful.

The next day, we took the train to Brussels to have a look around. I wanted to show Aaron the city square and the peeing boy statue. We got a tiny bit turned around on the way to the main square and ended up walking through a mainly Arabic neighborhood. I stupidly wore pointy toed boots with kitten heels, which turned out to be murder on cobblestones, so I was growing tired of being lost. After asking about six or seven very helpful Belgians, we finally made it to the city square.

We saw some buildings with really beautiful architecture, and we saw the peeing boy statue. There was also a church there with a bronze statue that you are supposed to rub for good luck, so I did.

That evening, we went to a nice restaurant for dinner. My Dad and I had some type of steak and french fries and Aaron had mussels. He had mussels in Brussels! Ha! Get it? Ok, he didn't think that was terribly humorous either, but I took a picture of him eating them anyway. Aaron also got a little more than he bargained for - there was a tiny crab inside of one of the mussels!

The dinner was ok and I was just glad to sit down and rest my feet. The restaurant wasn't very busy because we were there early, so it was just us and the owner's cat, who had free reign of the place. She was even up on the counter where they put out the food orders! I tried to push the idea of her feet touching dirty kitty litter and then walking on all the surfaces in the restaurant.

After dinner, we did a bit of window shopping and then walked back to the train station to catch the train back to Soignies. When we got back to my Dad's house, we had some strawberry shortcake and listened to my Dad talk about all the people that he works with and their various character flaws.

Then we went to bed, because we had to leave early the next morning to catch the train to Paris. I thought the train left at 8:40am...oops. It actually left at 8:24am! Thankfully, we got to the train station with time to spare and didn't miss our train. I said goodbye to my Dad and tried not to cry, but when the train pulled away, he waved to us and I lost it.

Aaron was comforting me, but added, "You know, your Dad didn't say hello to me. Actually, he didn't say goodbye to me either." Well, that's my Dad. Aaron is lucky that my Dad talked to him at all - he has pretty much ignored some of my past boyfriends, but I think he really likes Aaron in his own cranky, curmudgeon-like way.