Brussels, day 0.5-1

I've arrived in Brussels. I arrived on the Eurostar last night around 19:00. I spent last night finding the hotel and getting acclimatised to being in Europe. Today I started to wander around the city, I bought a map for €7(!), and went up to the cathedral, then I went past the parliament, through the Royal Park, to the Palace. At the palace there was a sign describing how it had inspired Hergé (the creator of Tintin) in the story "King Ottokar's Sceptre. I wandered on from there, found a tourist office and I bought a "Tintin tour map" which had a route to follow around Brussels, with various Tintin related destinations, mostly murals or, like the palace, what provided inspiration. I spent the entire day doing that, before I got home around 19:30. Tomorrow I plan to go to the Cinquantenaire before I head off to Ypres. I'll be doing photos when I get back to England, as I didn't pack my laptop, just my iPad (a great deal lighter), and uploading photos from the iPad to blogger and Facebook is quite arduous and time consuming. I'll look at what I could do when I'm on the train around places, but no guarantees. Next blog will be from Ypres tomorrow night.

Location:Brussels, Belgium