A Wild Morning For Our Big Finish!

I’m writing this Friday morning and this morning goes down as the wildest exit we’ve ever made from a city. But, I’ll get to that later. This is going to be a lengthy post because the past 48 hours have been eventful.

The whole visit to Brussels was memorable. We arrived there by Eurostar from Paris…easy trip in comfy first class seats. Betsy slept on the train…in fact…sleeping is what Betsy has been doing the last couple of days because she’s been so sick. She’s sleeping in the chair next to me as we wait to board our flight to Zurich.

We still have not managed to move through train stations in Europe with ease…we were lost in the Paris station long enough that we barely made our train.

In Brussels, we took a daredevil cab ride to our hotel. FYI: European drivers make American drivers look timid. Every time we’ve been in a vehicle, we’ve come within an inch of hitting another vehicle, a motorcycle, a cyclist, a pedestrian…at least it seems that way to us. But the drivers never flinch. And they zoom to every destination.

I booked our hotel in Brussels a bit late, two days before we left Paris. My goal was to stay in the downtown area since we only had a few hours to visit the city. I booked the Welcome Hotel. It has great reviews on Tripadvisor and elsewhere, and it was in a fantastic location and the price was great. I booked it in a hurry and didn’t really know anything about it when we arrived.

See those two skylights on the top of the building? Our room.

The woman at the desk, who owns the hotel with her husband, was super nice. Our room wasn’t ready, so I asked for any room that was ready since we were tired and Betsy felt terrible. She said a suite on the second floor was available as an upgrade, and she handed us the key. We ran up the stairs and opened the door to this picture I swiped from another site. Note: It has definitely been photoshopped.

The door said Silk Road Suite. I went back downstairs and said we would take it…but in the time it took us to look at it…it had booked online. So, while our room was being cleaned, we decided to get lunch, and picked a great spot at an outdoor cafe Kipkot. We had fabulous roasted chicken.

Back to the hotel and our room is ready. She handed us the key and told us to take the lift to the third floor and then “take the slow boat to China.” She also said something about the second key on the keychain opening an outside door…and reception closing…no one being around when we would leave for the airport at 6 a.m. except the housekeeper.

Big mistake not paying attention to that information.

Even though there was a lift, we still had to drag our luggage up two additional flights of stairs. We have way too much luggage, especially since we bought a small bag on the street in Paris to bring home some wine, etc. Never again with this much luggage. We say that every trip.

Here’s our room.

Random wall art in our China room.

Our view.

There was an upstairs with two twin beds. The main part of the room was very small and very hot. We were on the top floor, and that window was more of a skylight that didn’t really let any air in.

Betsy and I both took a nap, but she needed additional rest due to the cold/virus/plague we’ve passed back and forth on this trip. I decided to see a little of Brussels and headed over to the Grand Place. I can’t imagine a more accurate name (actually Grote Markt). First you go through one square with a museum.

And then this

Normally, there wouldn’t be tents on the square, but Sept. 7 started a beer festival. Oh how I wish I could have stayed for that.

This beer menu is unreal.

I sat down at a cafe and ordered beer and texted Betsy and she said she felt good enough to come join me. So we took another of our excellent selfies.

We walked around the square and then checked out some of the side streets and chocolate shops.

 Betsy ate one of those red globes. She said it was delicious, chocolate and raspberry

Here’s something we thought was interesting. You pay a certain amount and then sit at the bar while food moves down a conveyor belt and you choose what you want.

And then Betsy stopped at this window because she loves robot things…they creep me out and then one seemed to look right at me.

Then, back to the hotel and to bed. Neither of us slept much. Betsy’s throat hurt and the room was stuffy. I kept dreaming that we were going to sleep too late, that our reserved taxi wouldn’t show up, that somehow we ended up at the wrong airport. None of that happened, but something else did.

We were up at 4:30 to catch our taxi at 6 a.m. We were advised to be at the Brussels airport three hours before our flight. It was 5:50.

Here’s the part where we wish had listened better at check-in.

First, I had taken the elevator to the first floor, not the 0 floor. It’s the first time I had taken the elevator down, since I had walked the steps to leave earlier. I had three big bags with me and all the doors around me were either rooms (Tibet, Hong Kong, whatever) and another door unmarked that shut off the stairs.

Meanwhile, Betsy had gone to the 0 floor and could hear me one flight up trying to get the stairwell door open. She came up the stairs on the other side and we both kept saying “Where are you? How did you get there? How can you get out?” I thought she must have taken a different elevator. This went on a few minutes with me considering just kicking the door in Olivia Benson style, but better sense prevailed and I pulled the bags back on the elevator and pressed the 0 button.

The elevator opened into a hallway and the two doors to reception — one that leads behind the desk and one into the lobby — were locked. Betsy was there and took the extra key and tried to open the doors. It didn’t fit into either of the locks. And we tried, oh how we tried. Our panic was rising about how we were going to get outside and into our taxi. By this time, we are really loud in trying to figure out our dilemma (Escape Game, anyone?), and the hotel is filled with guests.

Betsy found an emergency exit door in the cleaning room with a sign warning an alarm would sound if it was opened. We stared it it, at each other, grabbed our stuff and decided to make a run for it. Just as Betsy pulled the door open, a woman, we’re guessing the person who cooks breakfast, was putting her key in the lock from the other side.

All three of us screamed.

That poor woman looked terrified of us, and who could blame her. We were talking frantically about needing to get out and she understood no English. She just saw to two crazy, ranting women, yelling and relieved to see someone.

She started waving her key at us and toward the reception door and she ran, literally ran, over to it and opened it, led us through and then used another key to open the front door of the hotel. Our cab was waiting.

About half-way through the harrowing cab ride, Betsy and I started laughing, hard, about that whole experience. We’ve nicknamed it the Hotel California, since you can never leave.

Lucy and Ethel had escaped.

I shot this as we pulled away. That may be something belonging to us on the step.

We hassled around again at the Brussels airport. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems, but finally our bags were checked and we were in one of the most beautiful airports I’ve ever seen. It was more like a very high end mall than an airport.

Then off on an hour-long flight to Zurich. They served food, but we had eaten at the airport. The Zurich airport was just as beautiful as Brussels, most of it anyway.

In Zurich, we kept walking toward our gate, which was as far through the airport as one could go, then we went through a passport check and then down into the waiting area for the Boston flight. Nothing there but a vending machine, and I was finally ready for a drink. It was about noon and we had already had quite the morning. But, no bars or caviar available for the American travelers.

The plane made up for that. We flew Swiss Air on the way home, and while it’s not as visually beautiful or quite as roomy as Lufthansa, the seats were super comfortable and the service was excellent. Champagne as soon as we sat down, then constant service of drink options, coffee, lunch, snacks, ice cream, breakfast. It was an 8 hour flight and it would have been easy to consume 8000 calories of food and drink.

We did not.

We had lunch and that was it. For airline food, it was very good. We watched a couple of movies: The Big Sick, which was funny and touching and wonderful, and Game Night, which was just laugh out loud funny. I also watched that Prime show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and it was, indeed, marvelous. I’m going to binging that when I get back home.

And finally, to Boston. We booked a night at the Hilton next to the airport so we could rest before diving back into our lives. We’re glad we did.

We’ll be back in our apartment with our cat, who will show us no affection, by 5 p.m. and then have all day tomorrow to do laundry and recuperate before getting back to our work lives.

This trip has been wonderful, despite the sickness and travel mistakes. The week in Provence was among the best experiences we’ve had and Paris delivered on its promises.

Next year…we’ll back to one of our walking holidays…either from Vienna to Prague or a Saunter in Sardinia. We’ll see.

Au Revoir!