Tonight I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open! And it is only 8:30pm. Sad. Hopefully we'll get a good night's sleep tonight and be done with the jet lag.
This morning we were both wide awake at around 3:30am, so we went down to the hotel restaurant with our computers until around 5. David got a little more sleep after that, but I wasn't able to go back to sleep at all, so I've been a zombie most of the afternoon.
We had an excellent breakfast at a fun little place David had discovered called Bagels & Beans - I had a multigrain bagel with honey and walnut cream cheese and David had an everything bagel with fresh mint tea. Everything was delicious. While there we got a call from our car rental contact in London (a man with a beautiful posh accent named, of course, Alistair) to arrange the pick-up at Dover tomorrow.
After breakfast I made a quick visit to the excellent National Museum of Antiquities, arriving right as it opened at 10am. I was the only visitor and had a wonderful time taking better pictures of my favorite artifacts - I've been there once before so it didn't take too long.
At around 10:30 we checked out, lugged our stuff back to the train station and, after some complications, got on an 11:16 train for Brussels. We changed trains in The Hague and the whole journey took just under three hours.
Our hotel in Brussels is just down the road from the station, which is awesome. And then it's only one more block in the other direction to the Grand Place, the main square known for its pretty Gothic buildings.
After checking in, we visited the Grand Place and the cathedral, then had an early lunch in the hotel restaurant. Today is our anniversary and it wasn't much of a celebration, but we were too tired to do anything else. We'll have a special dinner (or several) sometime later.
Then we resisted the siren call of the bed and went out for a longer walk in the evening, visiting a couple churches and some cute streets and markets. We both think Brussels is nice but not as worth going out of your way for as Bruges. But many people, especially Americans it seems, absolutely love it.
Tomorrow: England! We are planning to catch a train to the port of Calais (France) at 9:16am.
