Nivelles, Belgium

After a very early morning and a very long day yesterday, I chilled out today, so I'm only now getting to putting everything up.

My alarm went off at 4, but I didn't get up until 4:30. Luckily, I had everything I needed, so I still made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare. Eileen cut it a little close, but we made the train to Ashford. Of course, she forgot her tickets for the Eurostar, but the ladies at the help desk were able to find her reservations and give her a pass for the trains. We made it to Brussels without any problems. Because of the way that we booked our tickets, Eileen and I were a few rows apart, so I wound up sitting next to a guy from Germany, who'd been studying in England. We talked for a bit of the way, talking about what we'd seen and what was worth going to see, and, as Eileen says, he was kind of cute. Never got his name though...

Once in Brussels, we wandered around (oddly didn't have to go through customs) until we found an information booth, where the guy (who Eileen says thought I was cute) pointed us in the right direction. We got a ticket for Nivelles and found the train stop, where a lady who had a little bit of English assured us that we were waiting for the same train. We accidentally sat in the wrong part of the train, but we just moved when the ticket collecter came through.

Made it to Nivelles, where we stopped to look at the time tables to make sure we knew when we needed to be back at the station to get back to Brussels, and had a mini conversation with one of the staff of the train station, in Spanish, since he didn't know English, and I don't know French or Dutch. We assured him we were fine, and headed off for the church.

We made it to the church, and walked once around to find the main entrance, then walked back to a cafe that had English on the sign. When the waiter came to see us, I asked (in French, one of the few phrases I know) if he spoke English. He just looked at us. Then went to get the other lady working there who spoke perfect English and who got us menus in English. I still didn't know what some of the stuff was, but Eileen and I both got what turned out to be open sandwiches. Mine was really good. Though I'm not entirely sure what was on it. I also got Belgian hot chocolate, which was wonderful.

We had some time to kill, and we saw a souvenir shop marked on a map, so we headed out in the direction we though it was. Though being the operative word there. After walking for about 15 minutes we decided we were probably going the wrong direction and headed back. We still had a little while to kill, so we wandered in the church and looked around. We had just sat down when our guide found us. He was Belgian, but his mother was English, so he spoke decent English. While we were in the office taking care of details, they had a statuette of St. Gertrude (which he said San Jertrude) for sale, so I bought what turned out to be the last one.

He took us all around the church, telling us all about the history of the abbey, St. Gertrude and the town of Nivelles. The tour was awesome, though we did have to help from time to time with some English words. The cloister was beatiful. It has been on all of the churches I seen. It's where the monks used to copy manuscripts, so they had to have lots of natural light. They tour took longer than we thought, but we'd put in a lot of cushion time, so it was okay. We managed to avoid the pouring rain, and it was only sprinkling as we walked back.

When we got to the station, I used a combination of French, English, and hand gestures to get our tickets back to Brussels. It was actually kind of a fun experience. Once back at the Brussels station, we waited in front of a screen until our train had a platform and then went to find it. When we got there, we had to go through UK border control. In Brussels. When the train was stopping if France. 0.o But we got through, even though I couldn't remember the postal code for our address and Eileen had only a phone number.

We got on the train, again in seperate seats. I wound up sitting around a table with three people who were working on business together. They started talking about stuff in the newspaper, and random trivia stuff, then I fell asleep about when they started on business, then, right after I woke up (right before the Chunnel, which by the way, I was right about. It's just like every other tunnel, except your ears pop) they started talking about golf, which was pretty interesting, because I knew all the people they were talking about, and they were talking about the guy who won the British Open.

Made it back to Ashford with no problems. We then figured out where the next train to Canterbury was leaving from and hung out on the platform for a few minutes. Once back, we both headed home. I had some Broccolli and cheese soup and some fruit for dinner (the rest of which I had for lunch today), and then I went to bed. My feet hurt.

Today has been a slow day. I messed around on facebook for a while this morning, then headed out to the library when the cleaning staff knocked on the door. I stayed at the library for a little over an hour, but they were still here when I got back so I grabbed my book and ate lunch in the kitchen, where the other members of my flat were also hiding from the cleaning people. I finished my book, but so didn't feel like doing anything, so I read another book, then I got on here to update everything and upload pictures. Which are now on facebook. And now I'm going to go eat dinner (pizza!) and probably check the schedule again. Because I think McGee got some things backwards.

Zach requested to be put in my blog. So there. Now you're in my blog. :P