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| One of the few pictures we took in Vondelpark |
Rain was to play spoilsport in today’s plans. We had a quick breakfast were ready to go to Vondelpark. The weather was cold with temperature hovering around 10 deg Celsius and rain was in the air. We took our umbrellas and head out to take the tram. The park was just a stone’s throw from the hotel and we decided to take a tram to the next station instead of walking to save up my wife’s leg for the rest of the day. To start with we took the tram in the wrong direction so we got off in the next stop and took another tram and hopped off two stops later. We walked for a short while before we spotted the entrance of the park. Vondelpark is apparently 120 acres in size and therefore has several entry points. As we started walking towards the entrance a slight drizzle made its entry. By the time we reached the park the drizzle stopped and we thought it might just be a passing shower. We entered the park and it was all wet and covered with slush at places maybe due to overnight rains. I clicked a couple of pictures of my wife and then all out a sudden a heavy downpour started just as we were standing in the open are of the park. We opened out our umbrellas and rushed off the open area. The rain now was very heavy and we were getting drenched rapidly. We ran out of towards the trees to give us some protection. We waited for a few minutes to observe the rain and it only seemed to intensify. So we decide to get back to the hotel. By the time we hit the tram station and boarded it the shower had become consistent and heavy. We returned to our room shivering after being exposed to the cold and rain. After drying ourselves we decided to stay indoors to prevent more exposure to the rains. We had noted down the train timing for return to Brussels. We departed around midday.
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| Bye Bye Amsterdam! |
We were disappointed with how the proceedings of the morning had panned out. The rain had already dampened our spirits. We had entertained thoughts of stopping over at either Rotterdam or The Hague on our way back but we decided against it. So we left around noon and we reached Brussels by 3.30 pm. We were really hungry as we had skipped lunch so we grabbed a sandwich from the Brussels Nord station. The next step was to hunt for a crepe bandage for my wife as her ankle didn’t look good at all and we had several hectic days ahead in the trip. We entered a medical shop and tried to explain to the lady at the counter for bandages. She first showed something like a knee cap, then finally she got what we were asking for. We just hoped this was worth the investment of 10 euros and headed home and wrapped up the ankle in it. We then decided on two things for the rest of the evening. First was to shop for chocolates. Chocolates are in my opinion is the best for gifting to relatives and friends. “What did you get from Europe for me” is a question that inevitably comes up and we needed an easy answer it. And chocolates work best. It is available in plenty in this part of the world and the cost can be managed as per our needs. The second in our list was to visit the Atomium one of Brussels’ noted structures. We actually wanted to visit either the Tintin museum in Brussels (Tintin hails from Belgium and my wife is a diehard fan) or the Comic strip centre ( this not only had dedications to Tintin but also Asterix and other comics of Belgian origin) but we realized that it was too late for these. They would close by 5:30. So Atomium was the choice for our last evening in Brussels.
Soon our friend returned from work. She took us to a nearby wholesale store for chocolates. Initially we planned to visit a factory located nearby Brussels to buy chocolates. That as per our friend would work out even cheaper than buying packed chocolates from stores. But the flipside is that it comes with no standard packing as you would see in stores. We needed to pack it ourselves and since we had a large part of our tour still remaining we had to ensure that we safeguarded them. So it became imperative for us to have them packed properly. Therefore we decided to drop the plan of going to the factory even though it would have saved us some money. A 15 min. walk from our apartment to the Colruyt store. Our friends suggested us to pick Cot’dOr. We directly attacked the chocolate section. My wife was running haywire up and down the chocolate section not knowing which one to pick. I asked her to calm down and to sample each row one by one and systematically so that she doesn’t leave any stone unturned. After about half an hour our basked was almost three fourth full with varies ranging from 75% pure dark chocolate to white chocolate slabs to truffles and everything in between. Some of other brands which had interesting flavors were Galler, Jacques etc. We also found Cot’dOr mini bars sold in lose pieces which could be picked by weight. We picked some of those and also on some irresistible biscuits with biscuits filled with chocolates. Since we had a long journey the next day to Switzerland we picked up 2 packets of buns which we thought would be useful during the travel. And how precious this decision would turn out to be!! Now we moved on the billing where we found we had shopped for around 70 Euros. And the surprise came when the lady manning counter for some reason would not accept any card that I was having. I heard that in general chip cards is preferred but I thought they would still take card that don’t have the chip. I couldn’t quite understand what the billing clerk wanted and what was wrong. Finally we had to settle down to cash. But another problem arose. We didn’t have that much of cash. Finally all the three of us pooled in everything and could somehow manage the cash. That incident made me a bit uncomfortable using my prepaid travel card. Till date I didn’t understand what the problem was but I personally feel that there was a communication gap between the billing clerk and us. The lady also rejected the cards showed by my friend and she was surprised as my friend was a regular at this supermarket for her monthly groceries.
All is well that ends well. We came out with almost 3 kilograms of chocolates we walked back home. A strange feeling that the return path was longer and more grueling crept in because I was carrying the load. We dropped off the chocolates, borrowed some money from our friend for the travel and then took the tram #7 from the station right outside our place of stay to reach Heyzel. After a meandering 15 min ride in the tram the Atomium structure was visible from 2 stations before Heyzel. The structure was glowing in the evening sunshine. We were already late for entry into the main structure as the last entry is at 5 pm. So we only went around the huge steel structure which represents the structure of an Iron crystal and took some pictures.
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| Outside the Atomuim |
We walked across the Atomium and we spotted a small frites shop across the fountains. Since we knew it would be the last day in Belgium we thought we should have one last dose of the sinful double fried frites. Unfortunately the fiasco while buying the chocolates meant that we were totally out of cash (except for some small change which we wanted to save for the return tram) and we were now very apprehensive of using the travel card. We found the public transport pricey here with a single one way ticket prices at 2.5 Euros for a bus, tram or metro ride. We also quickly realized that finding an ATM is as difficult and spotting an oasis in the desert. We repented for not having withdrawn cash in Amsterdam where ATMs were plenty. But we refrained from using them since they were directly on the walls (with no enclosing) and also the place looked unsafe. We inquired in one of the hotels in the vicinity and the desk clerk gave us some directions to the nearest ATM which he estimated would be a kilometer away. We embarked on our quest using the directions given by the man in the hotel and after walking for a while we entered an eerie neighborhood. We got a bit uncomfortable because we hardly saw any signs of people around the place and overall there was strange silence around the place. This felt very odd as we had experienced a lot of tourist crowd over the last few days. Most of the shops were shut barring one which I entered and once again asked about the nearest ATM. The man in the shop was very puzzled with the term ATM and after long deliberation he said “Money Machine”! He gave me a fresh set of directions and since we didn’t have any other options (no maps and no GPS, can’t believe how lost one can be) we again went down the path that the shopkeeper gave and eureka we finally found a bank and an ATM attached to it. We quickly went in and withdrew cash and headed to the metro station which we went past when entered the ATM. We decided that instead of walking back to the tram station we would take a train and then switch to tram. After all this mini adventure we missed the last chance to have frites. The metro station was an experience by itself. This was also very sparsely populated with an uncomfortable silence. Worst of all, we couldn’t find any metro staff and all the counters were empty. It was a futile attempt to look for a ticket counter to buy a ticket. We noticed several vending machines though. We were apprehensive of using them since we thought they accept only cards. We later realized that the machines accepted cash and also gave the change out. We bought 2 tickets (these were valid for connections, so we could use them on the tram as well!) and took the next metro to the nearest tram station. We reached home and a fresh Indian dinner awaited us. We had dinner and packed out bags as we had a long journey ahead of us the following day. After trying out several combinations we somehow packed all the chocolates into one suitcase and since our next destination was Switzerland we ensured that all the warm clothes were out in our backpacks. Amidst all this preparation for our stay in Switzerland little did we know what was in store for us the following day in our train ride.
-- Yes & Why
