Thursday 26th September 2019

We woke up to another even greyer morning and evidence of overnight rain. Never mind, there is more of Brussels we want to see so undeterred by the rain that was falling after breakfast we headed out to the streets to find our way to the European Parliament, via the Belgian Courts of Justice and the Royal Palace.

The Royal Palace, above, was not surrounded by high railings like Buckingham Palace, although well guarded by Police and soldiers, so had the feel of being more open and accessible.

The Parliament building as expected was huge, but no sign of Katya Adler!! I just wanted to see it, not really sure why, but I wanted to do so whilst we are still in the EU. Don’t ask me why! I don’t know!!

By this time we were getting a bit wet and we had our 24hour tickets that were still valid so we decided to have another crack at understanding the public transport system. We had picked up a map yesterday, but it hadn’t really helped. Lots of coloured lines of different thicknesses, numbers, and all relating to buses, trams and the metro. Just which was which?!

First challenge! How do you get into the metro station when your ticket is not what it says on the machine? Answer, it doesn’t matter, the machine takes our cards as well, it just doesn’t tell you that!! So we manage to find the right line, go in the right direction, and change trains. Except this wasn’t a train, it was a tram, and it was underground! No wonder we couldn’t see trams when we thought there ought to be some! They were beneath us 🤦‍♀️ But what’s this? On the tram there is a little machine to tap, like with Oyster cards. Some people are tapping, some are not! What do we do? We tap, just in case! And we get back to our hotel in time to check out and get back to Gare du Midi for our train to Cologne. And we use the tram, underground, again! We‘ve got this transport system sussed!!

Feeling very pleased with ourselves we get to the station only to find there is one train cancelled. Ours! 😬 Off to the information desk where we are given a print out telling us which train to get on which platform and what time. All good so far! We do as we are told, along with many others, although we realise that this particular train is only taking us as far as Verviers (not sure about the spelling!). A quick check on Google shows that at least it is in the right direction! The guard on the train assures us that when we get to Verviers there will be buses to take us to Aachen and then the train onto Cologne. Sure enough, the buses where there and we arrived in Aachen at around the time we should have arrived in Cologne. Never mind! At this point it did become a little chaotic as we tried to find out which train and platform we needed, but we managed it and at about 3.45 we were on a very full day train that had come from Brussels, leaving 2 hours after the one that had been cancelled! However we had had a bit of a tour through northern Belgium which we would have missed otherwise. So we arrived in Cologne 2 hours late, and yes we can claim compensation! For those of you who moan about our trains though, please note that the maximum we can get back is 50% of the fare, and that is only when you are delayed by 2 hours. It’s only 25% when you are delayed by an hour!

A quick walk to the hotel, dump the bags again and out for a quick meal. Sightseeing in Cologne will have to wait until the morning and it’s still grey and drizzly 😕