Where can we find a night train?

---

Well, a day can definitely make a difference in my opinion of a place. If you would have asked me on Sunday what I thought of Brussels I would have said it was an interesting city that was kind of cool. Now I'd say the best word to describe it is goofy and that it's an awesome place to visit. Sunday was a pretty uneventful day for us, since pretty much everything was closed and the city felt very dead. Our hostel was also really far away from the city center so that made it hard to go see all the sights and action. We did go out eventually at night, got some dinner which I felt was pretty unimpressive, but followed it up with a fries place recommended by the hostel receptionist. He was definitely right, they were good (and fresh). Overall we weren't really blown away by the city after our first day, though.

That view definitely changed on Monday. The weather was perfect, everything was open, and we pretty much spent the whole day wandering around the city center exploring. The city is just really nice to look at - it's very modern, even the older buildings, which are really impressive, have a little bit of a modern feel to them. Brussels feels like it has a kind of sense of humor about itself that I've never seen before. Randomly scattered throughout the city are walls that are painted with comic-strip type scenes... sometimes right next to a very elegant and impressive building. There's also a church with urinals installed on the outside of the building. Probably the best example, though, would be the city's symbol - the Manneken Pis statue. It's actually pretty much what it sounds like, a statue of a little boy peeing. Very funny to see that statue represented everywhere across the city.

The people there also contribute to the overall atmosphere of Brussels. Everyone seems pretty laid-back, friendly, gifted with languages. It seems like everyone speaks both French and Dutch (even the road signs have both French and Dutch names on them), and pretty much everyone I've found has spoken a little English, too. We met a couple of guys and talked to them a little, and in addition to those 3 languages they knew Spanish and some German. We've also seen more people with dreadlocks here than everywhere else in Europe combined... it's really just a different city from everywhere else, and it's very fun to experience.

We also got to sample some famous waffles and chocolate, which I naturally enjoyed immensely. I hadn't known until a few days ago, but apparently fries are also Belgium invention. There are shirts for sale that say "frites are a Belgium invention, so naturally we call them french fries" - another good example of the sense of humor Brussels seems to have. Unfortunately, all the hostels in the city were booked full for Monday night, so we were forced to leave a little prematurely. After a lot of time on the internet, we came up with a plan (hopefully) for the rest of our trip.

We left Brussels and went to Paris for the 35th time this trip (or something like that), and from there caught a night train to Carcasonne. We kind of planned around going somewhere far enough away that we can get night trains... Night trains = very cheap sleeping. Carcasonne is an ancient walled city/castle in southern France, and that's where I'm currently writing from. We spent the morning patrolling the castle walls and checking out the inside of the walled city. It's extremely cool, even by castle standards (castles are awesome by nature, but this was particularly awesome). We got here early, before all the tourists, and had the perfect setting. It was cloudy and very windy, which just gave everything a "medieval" feel - walking along the ramparts and looking down the 100ft drop into the moat as the wind was wipping through the arrow slits was an amazing experience.

Now we're once again killing some down time as we wait for a train to take us back to Paris for what should be the 53rd time. We're staying in Paris tonight and then tomorrow going for a day trip to Normandy and the D-Day beaches, which I'm really excited for. We just decided to do this yesterday - very spur of the moment. I have high expectations I guess because we're going on a day-long guided tour that is supposed to be very well done, which it better be because it is very expensive. But, we figured it would be a very cool way to end our trip and appropriate to get some US history while we're abroad too. We can't really do it ourselves either, because a car is kind of needed to travel around the area. So hopefully it lives up to my expectations. And then from there we go back to Paris for 2 more days to end the trip.

While I'm writing and have a little extra time, here are a few random thoughts I've had but haven't written about.

- France is kind of a pain to travel by train. Almost all the trains require reservations, which means more money we have to pay and makes it difficult to just improvise our travels. Also, travel among cities can be very sporadic, besides Paris, which explains why we've been there so much already. It seems like no matter where you want to go you need to go to Paris first - even if it's only a quarter of the distance to go straight there.

- I've been very surprised by how many of the stereotypes I unknowingly had before coming here have proven false. The thing that comes to mind the most is how diverse each country is in Europe. Italy, for example, is not filled with only tan, dark-haired people who ride around on scooters everywhere - there's really just as much diversity as in the US.

- I hope to put up a map sometime showing the route we've taken while traveling, because I'm sure it looks completely ridiculous. In retrospect, the path we've gone on doesn't really show a whole lot of logic. Oh well.

- It's fun to travel without a plan, but only to a certain point. I feel like we're being really inefficient in our travels this way. We tend to have to spend a lot of time in internet cafes trying to figure out what we can do and what we should do. It's still pretty cool to have complete freedom from day to day, but I think I prefer a little more of a plan... it just lets us get more stuff done. Hopefully our plan for the rest of our trip works out that way!

---

Photos

Brussels
Some buildings in the Grote Markt, or Grand Place.

Brussels
More Grote Markt

Brussels
Even more Grote Markt. The trash on the ground comes from a huge party they had the night before in the street.

Brussels
A nice view down a street, with that one building from the Grote Markt in the background. If you can't tell by my descriptions, I didn't have a guidebook for Brussels so I really don't know a whole lot about the sights.

Brussels
One of the comic-strip walls that were littered throughout the city.

Brussels
A close-up of the comic-strip walls.

Brussels
The Manneken Pis Statue, apparently the most photographed statue in the world.

Brussels
Close-up

Brussels
One of Belgium's specialty... chocolate! They are the only place I have seen so far that sells 99% chocolate bars, and I'm extremely disappointed in myself for having not bought any.

Carcassonne
The walled city from a distance

Carcassonne
From the outside looking in. It looks pretty formidable.

Carcassonne
Walking along the area between the first and second defensive walls. We pretty much had the city to ourselves - it was the perfect atmosphere.

Carcassonne
The area around one of the four gates into the city.

Carcassonne
Looking through the crenelations to the new city below.

Carcassonne
The bridge spanning to the central keep, which was protected by a third wall of defense.

Carcassonne
Walking the ramparts.

Carcassonne
An arrow slit.

Comments

[Rachel]

Tour?
Joshua! Was the tour as amazing as expected?!?!