How we spent time in 4 different cities in 3 different countries in one day

The day starts around 2 am in London when I went "Holy shit! the train ticket price had risen from 70 pounds to 182 pounds." I wasn't aware that EuroStar ticket price is variable. So I waited until the last second to check up. But boy am I aware of it now.

Tim can be seen here. dragged out of bed at 5am in the morning, waiting for a tube train to take us to the international station. Actually we dragged each other out of bed. We had to, if we were to keep out itinerary today....

2 quick hours of napping later. We were in Brussels Midi - the most confusing train station in the world!

We found our way out to a cafe near by: The trip took less than a little less than 2 hrs. So we were there right at breakfast time. And what 's more perfect to have for breakfast in Belgium than Belgium waffles!

In the US when you order a cup of tea, you get that: a cup a tea. in a fancy shop you'll get to choose what type it is, but most of the time you'll get a bag of lipton black tea. In Europe (in London, Brussels, Bruges and Amsterdam alike) you'll get this: tea, sugar, milk and a cracker. Fancy eh?

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We thought about browsing Brussels, but the hustle and bustle of the city and our tight schedule deterred us. So we went back into the station after our breakfast and start looking for train to go to Bruges.

Did I mentioned I was confused in Brussels Midi station before? I was. There were essentially NO English sign. Hell there was NO sign (for things we were looking for, like luggage locker, ticket sale, bathrooms, etc. ). No ATM machine. No public map. It took us a good 2 hours running back and forth to find the tickets office, note that ticket for Bruges is sold in one place, ticket for Amsterdam is sold some where else. Of course signs for that information didn't exist.

Anywho, I was just glad we got on this here train.

 and on our merry way to Bruges.

We all heard of Belgium chocolate right? I got excited about the colors and the shapes and the varieties in the store.

So I suggested we should buy some of these and snack on them, they were just so pretty. But Tim pointed out that we haven't even gotten out of the train station yet. 

So I reluctantly moved on.

 Once out of the train station, we look for the highest visible point of the city and follow it. We chose to avoid the crowds and follow more quite residential street. (HAHAHA... just bluffing, everyone else know where they were going, and we didn't, so here we are_

 Tim on one of the main streets in Bruges

The city is small and charming. Our unconventional routes took us through the quiet neighborhoods where streets were small and paved with bricks.
This is the square in the center of the city

Flowers in the square were in full bloom and looked gorgeous.

Some of the tulips look a lot like my favourite flowers peonies.

Then it was time for lunch, we dropped into a restaurant beside the square.

The beeper from the camera's selftimer scared the crap out of the guy behind us, Tim said. He heard some slow beeps then it started to become rapid as it gets ready to take the picture.

First came the Belgium beer in funny glass.

 Then came our food which included local specialty mussels. These are must have when you're hear. They are very sweet and tasty.

Me taking a drink on that boong looking beer glass.

After our lunch Tim and I set out on Tim's quest for a waffle cone ice cream.

We stopped by a museum that was closed for the day.

So Tim attempted to get them to open.

Last looks at the square before we leave.

After walking for a while. Tim was giving up. But LOOK! we found him waffle ice cream cone. Tim was satisfied.

"No one gets their fingers on my ice cream cone." said Tim the cone-terminator.

We sat and snapped a picture on the side of the canal that runs through/by the city. We had the best possible spring weather that day.

Then we said goodbye to Belgium and hopped on a train for Amsterdam. We took the cheapest train which is usually used by locals to commute to Brussels to work. It was crowded, crappy and a slower than the nicer highspeed Thalys trains. But at half the price, Tim jumped in it. And I agreed with him since we've already got burned on the EuroStar tickets just this morning.

We got to Amsterdam around 11.30pm that day. Bought the last 2 slices of pizza from a closing pizzeria food stop at the Centraal station. Waved down the nicest taxi I've ever been in and got to the hotel. 

 ... we went.