We had afternoon tickets to Brussels and a day to kill in London. Unfortunately, we also had our bags to drag around. After breakfast, we headed straight to the station, and then I left Phyllis and Judy with the bags while the girls and I took a quick visit to Trafalgar Square. I took them inside the National Gallery for about an hour and tried to give them a crash course in famous works. We really only had time to see one painting by Leonardo, a few by Van Gogh (including Sunflowers), and some Monet. I didnt think any of it would sink in, but I was pleased when we got back to the train station that they recognized a poster with Sunflowers as the same picture that they saw.

We grabbed food at the station, including a really good chicken sandwich, and boarded the train for Brussels. It was definitey better than the ferry. About an hour of farmland, then twenty minutes under the tunnel, then out the other side. It was dark and late when we arrived in Brussels. We had booked a room at a place called the Theater Hotel. But things did not go well. I couldn’t make sense of the public transit in the dark, and we could not find a cab willing to take five people. Finally we found one, but the driver could barely speak English. He told us that there was no hotel at the address I gave him. He drove us there anyway, and sure enough there didn’t seem to be any hotel. Instead, there was a seedy looking area and a prostitute picking up a customer. He took us to another hotel, and I ended up paying extra for the room. All in all, it was a rough introduction to the continent for us.