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Old Jul 13, 2012, 4:59 am
  #14  
Short hair Francis
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: HKG/YVR/NYC
Programs: AC 75K, A3*G, AS MVPG, AA LT Gold 1MM, JL/JGC (OWS) , Marriott Titanium, Hertz 5*, Avis PC
Posts: 3,697
I pick ICE train 16 as that gave me a nice break during lunch time and gave me a bit of time to cover both Cologne and Brussels in 1 day.




With the disasterous ride I had with Thalys on the way to Cologne where I was stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey, I went with 1st class ticket for the 2 hour train ride.

The investment paid off pretty well considering I got my own private mini-cabin

Where’s the German efficiency, we’re 20 mins late


I was surprised to have some audio entertainment onboard the ICE train, except it must have been satellite based, therefore, every tunnel the train went through, the audio cuts out 10 sec later, D’Oh
Due to my severe lack of research, I really kind of struggle to get out of Brussels South this afternoon, and my dumb luck in figuring out rail station lockers were no better.

At least it was a good test to using some of my lackluster French, the metro did the trick and I did get a number of Brussels hotspot covered

Palais du Roi, Royal Palace


I surprisingly found this ski lane in the central Brussels, at the time, Europe had a winter problem, lack of cold weather and snow and my buddy in Innsbruck didn’t have enough snow for skiing




Grand Place



Hotel De Ville, City Hall


Manneken Pis



What’s a trip to Belgium without buying some Chocolates back for the folks, it was the tiny boxes since it needed to fit in my carry-on


A bit of Christmas Lighting on Avenue Louise


The shopping on this street is way outside my price range

I finally picked a TGV train to Paris CDG at 7:30pm as my overnights was at the Hyatt Regency CDG in Paris





I was so dead at the long day that I completely passed out for the 1 hr 30 min ride to CDG, hopefully I didn’t snore too much to bug everyone else.

1 day vacation day done, the next awaits in Paris!


Next Part
Part 3 – Always exceeding expectations, Paris, France
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