Day 5 - Sep 5, 2009 Last updated: 10/7/09 8:00pm PT
Day five, Eurostar from London to Brussels for lunch, Thalys to Köln (Cologne), local trains to Bacharach, Germany.
Aside from the flights to/from Seattle, this was our longest travel day. After about 6 hours of sleep, we left our hotel in London at 5:35am, took the Tube (subway), Eurostar (high speed), Thalys (high speed), InterCity (pretty darn fast), and TransRegio (local) trains to Bacharach Germany, arriving at 6:30pm. Most of Europe is 1 hour ahead of the UK. So 12 hours of travel. Before we left home, I had emailed the hotel in Bacharach telling them we’d arrive on the 6:30pm train, because before we left, I actually thought we could make all the train connections. A guy from our hotel was waiting at the train station in Bacharach and drove us up the hill, not very far, to the hotel. Very nice of them to do that. They close their front desk at 6pm, so he had to stay late to get us checked in. I can’t believe we arrived exactly when we planned. We took some small chances with two of the local trains because the trains we planned on taking were late, but they weren’t big chances because we knew the right direction to go and the train stations are pretty well signed.
The Eurostar was uneventful. It was very smooth. Going in the Chunnel was something you almost didn’t notice. After a while of it being dark outside you realize that you are under the English Channel.
We arrived in Brussels, Belgium a little after 10am. We went to the Grote Markt (Grand Place) which is the central square of Brussels. It’s where all the tourists go. Our plan was to eat chocolate and waffles for lunch, then see the chocolate museum and the ancient musical instruments museum. We only had until 2pm as we had pre-purchased tickets on the Thalys high speed train to Cologne, Germany. To get to the square, we needed to ride the subway. It took us a while to find a ticket machine that took cash, instead of the transit smart cards. We weren’t the only ones with problems, we saw other people eyeing the ticket machines with a confused look, trying to find a hole in the machine that would accept money. Once at the Grote Markt, we walked around and sampled chocolates from a few of the shops. We got the waffle lunch, but skipped the museums. We looked for the chocolate museum, but couldn’t find it. The instrument museum was just too far of a walk.
It was Saturday at lunch time, the tents in the background were setup as a beer garden. We did not sample the local brews.
Lunch in Brussels was chocolate and waffles. Here are the waffles, with ice cream, and in my case, chocolate sauce. We visited some of the chocolate shops that surround the Grote Markt. It’s tourist central here, so we paid a steep price for a few pieces of chocolate, but it was extremely good overpriced chocolate.
After Brussels, we took the Thalys train to Cologne. We needed to catch an Intercity train from there to Koblenz, then transfer to a local train to Bacharach. I had the train schedules all planned out and had heard the Germany trains are always on time. They were on time during the rest of our trip, but the train we wanted from Cologne to Koblenz was 25 minutes late. That would make us miss the train from Koblenz to Bacharach. Luckily, European trains run all the time (every half-hour, hour or two hours to the main cities), so you can just get on a different train going in the same direction.
Here is a picture of our hotel in Bacharach, Germany. It’s the building in the center.
