On to Antwerp!

We got up at the ungodly hour of 5 am and walked two blocks over to the St. Pancras Eurostar International Station (the hardest part was getting our suitcases up the stairs at the hotel) and, within a surprisingly reasonable amount of time, we were comfortably seated on the train and on our way to Brussels! It took about two hours and we gained an hour in the process. There wasn’t much to see out the window and we had gone under the Channel so quickly, we barely had time to contemplate it. When we reached Brussels, we wheeled our suitcases up many escalators, admiring the design, and found our way to the local ticket office – so efficiently run – with several people helping travelers of many nationalities buy tickets from a machine. My helper even told me when the next train to Antwerp was and the platform. We found our way without difficulty and had about 20 minutes before our train appeared. It was about 45 minutes and as we couldn’t understand any of the announcements, we just hoped for the best and soon arrived (the gap was so extreme between train and platform, I was grateful to a fellow traveler who came back from his own luggage to help us get ours off the train).

Alas, we barely noticed the elegant station!