Day Fiftynine - Jul 19, 2012
Paris, France to Brussels, Belgium
Daily Didactic
Our day started nonsensically early, so we could pack and be at the Pantheon for its unlikely opening hour of 8:00. We were self contained and ready to rumble by 8:00 and headed the five minutes from our steps to the steps of the Pantheon. The Pantheon, however, apparently opens at 10:00. Hmmm... We now had a few hours to kill and were packed for the road. Five minutes from our steps in the opposite direction were the Luxembourg Gardens, which we'd peeked into, but not explored. Opportunity presented, we headed in and wandered the gardens and the high test neighborhood beyond for a few hours. The garden is one of those metropolitan oases and was a lovely place to wander. Around 10:00 we took the short walk back to the Pantheon just to take a quick look. Our 4 day passes that made it free were all done, not meant to be. We grabbed our packs from Sam's awesome micro flat and hit the metro for Gare du Nord. We caught the 12:01 to Brussels and landed at Brussels-Midi. Three stops on the metro brought us to the Bourse, the Brussels Stock Exchange building across the street from our flat. Our apartment host here owns the restaurant below, so we stopped in and met Dominique who showed us our grandest digs to date. The place is huge and it really doesn't matter at this point if Brussels has anything else going on, we could just stay in here. We hit the super market a block away and found some cheapish salmon and really cheap mussels. There is something about Belgium and mussels, you can get them on the street with frites (fries), but we haven't figured out what the deal is yet. No matter, the mussels are insanely tasty compared to what we get in Anchorage. We returned to our palatial digs and whipped up a great dinner, before settling in and calling it a great day.
Today's Photos
