[vnabhi]

Nice pics. Almost like being there. You saved us a trip to those parts, buddy!

Please continue with the fantastic narration.

[samarth.bhatia]

It had been a pretty nice day so far.
We had driven about 250 odd kms already.
Kudos to Uncle for taking us to all these wonderful places.

------

Next Destination:
Distance to Destination: About 30 kms

The drive took us through the inner parts of town. With beautiful homes, and very nice landscaping. The day had been good to us.
In Amsterdam, usually around this part of the year, the weather is quite unpredictable.
One moment it can be bright and sunny, the other, dark, cloudy, rainy.
It had rained through most parts of the day, on our first four days.
Today, it rained only in the morning. Rest of the time, we had been very fortunate.

So headed to Haarlem. There was a nice beach there. And this time, it was a proper beach



------

The idea was, we'll reach and have some light snacks.
There was a type of fried fish which was supposed to be quite good.

When we reach, I could see the beach. It was beautiful.
Here's some pics.















This is the place where we had our snacks from:



Some delicious food:



We ate and we started for home.



Some nice buildings en-route.





There were plans for dinner with the entire family at a Turkish restaurant that serves some nice Shawarma.
I was to learn that Shawarma in Europe is quite different from Shawrma in Delhi. It's a totally different dish. And it's delicious.

----

We got back home. Packed for our trip to Paris and Brussels.
And left for dinner with the family.

2 men, 2 backpacks, 2 days, 3 countries. And travel by bus.
Coming up.

[funkmeister]

The picture with which you said is a Kia- i think its a Ford Ka soft top.

[samarth.bhatia]

Originally Posted by vnabhi

Nice pics. Almost like being there. You saved us a trip to those parts, buddy!

Thank you Hope you enjoy the rest as well.

Originally Posted by funkmeister

The picture with which you said is a Kia- i think its a Ford Ka soft top.

I have notified the mods.
I don't know how I made that error.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Hope you have enjoyed the travelogue so far.

Cheers,
Sam

[Ford5]

Very nice euro trip, good pics and narration. Keep the clicks coming.

I couldn't help but notice many cars and cycles being parked on sidewalks/footpaths. Isn't that sort of a hindrance to pedestrians? Much like India except that they're not overflowing

[funkmeister]

Originally Posted by samarth.bhatia

Thank you Hope you enjoy the rest as well.



I have notified the mods.
I don't know how I made that error.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Hope you have enjoyed the travelogue so far.

Cheers,
Sam

You are welcome Samarth! so far, so good with the thread. Keep them coming and looking forward to read more about your Paris and Brussels experience.

[samarth.bhatia]

We had spent wonderful day moving about in Holland.
We had had a lovely Turkish dinner.

But now, it was time for our bus ride. To Paris.
Eurolines promises Asmterdam to Paris in 8 hours.
At less than one third the cost of train. And that's last minute booking.

We got to the station about half an hour ahead of the scheduled time of 10:00 pm. We walked into the room with counters for check-in. Yes, check-in. For a bus. After waiting in like for about 15 minutes, we get to the lady at the counter.
She looks at the prints we have of the tickets. She asks for our passports. Studies them very closely. Gives us the bagagge tags. And then says "I'm new here. So it took some time. You see the police in France aren't like Dutch Police. They are very rough. They check your baggage. If something illegal is found, you go to jail. And our bus get laaeeta (late)!"

Ok. We are a bit taken aback, I must admit. I agree that punctuality of the bus is important. But I feel it's a bit rude to tell someone, you get arrested my bus get late! But maybe I'm just a bit old fashioned!

So we go sit in the bus.
It leaves the station 20 minutes late. And not because of our baggage. lol



The journey is smooth. The roads are silky. I occupy two seats but can't sleep. My legs need some space. Don't have any.
My upper body twists around to get some part of the seat to rest itself on. It doesn't find any.

At 5:15 am, I get out of the little slumber I got. I see our bus standing in some tunnel. Just standing there. No movement, no driver. Nobody outside. And a shutter in front of us.

A man comes in a car. Operates some switch near the shutter. Opens the 15 foot shutter partially and takes his car in. And then the shutter comes back down.

It's a bit strange, all this.

Around 6:00 am, our bus is taken in through the shutter, parked. Some black doggies wag their tails around the baggage. And in 3 minutes, we are all off the bus. That's it. No checking for narcotics on our person.

We're in France!!

Crossing an International border like this in a very new experience to me.
And it's brilliant!

Coming up next: PARIS

[vnabhi]

Originally Posted by samarth.bhatia

Around 6:00 am, our bus is taken in through the shutter, parked. Some black doggies wag their tails around the baggage. And in 3 minutes, we are all off the bus. That's it. No checking for narcotics on our person.

We're in France!!

Crossing an International border like this in a very new experience to me.
And it's brilliant!

Hmm, reminds me of what some of my colleagues who visited West Germany in the mid-80s told me.

When they took a bus to return to West Germany from East Germany, I believe their bus's underbody was scanned with mirrors attached to long poles to make sure nobody was trying to escape undetected.

Things look more civilised now, going by your narration.

[samarth.bhatia]

So we were in Paris by 6:00 am.
My father had been there before. He knew some of the nice places to visit.
And this bus terminal had a metro station in it.

We headed to the ticket counter. Asked the lady where we were and how to get to the spots of interest. She was nice enough to give us a map.
We now knew we wanted to visit the Effel, the Arc de Troumph and the Royal Palace (where the Louvre Musee was also located).

By the time we knew all this, it was still only 6:30 am. And it was cold.
I was hoping Paris weather would be kind to us.

By 7:45 am, we were bored of waiting, and were done with the morning business. (0.40 Euros per head, in case you were wondering!)

We knew that from here to Effel by Metro meant 3.40 Euros one way. The lady had suggested buying a full day pass for 6.80 Euros per head, valid on most modes of public transport. We did just that.

We took the metro. And I have to say, after travelling extensively in Amsterdam, the metro and stations at Paris were a let down. They were convenient and punctual, sure.
But they were clickity clackety noisy!
In about 40 minutes, after changing the metro from one station, we were at the Effel.
This big empty space, and a sloping down road, with fountains in the middle, leading to the Effel.

Now this empty space was quite huge. With two buildings on the side. And a wedding in the middle. It was beautiful.
And then my stomach started to rumble. I found a nice stand thingy with a guy selling pancakes and crepes and stuff.
We got ourselves both and sat on the stairs to eat. Staring at the Effel.
I liked the whole feeling. Immensely.

But we were still hungry after that. We had time. So we walked and walked and walked. There was a nice bakery. We got ourselves some Quiche. And, just like that, Paris redefined Quiche for me. Delicious.

But I was still hungry. And dad wanted tea. So after checking out some French breakfast menus, we finally settled on a nice restaurant with an English breakfast menu.
I ate in peace. Dad had a nice pot of tea. The tea was a Sri Lankan brand dad recognized. So dad just had a nice pot. With average tea. lol

Then we walked back to the Effel.
Here's some snaps of that:

The Effel Tower, ladies and gentlemen:



Building with golden (gold plated?) window frames, gold plated statues



Me with the building. Ouch! The Sun is in my eyes! It's burning, I tell you!



Me with the Effel.



Me with the Effel, going down the steps leading to the Tower.



Front side of the building.



Side view from the steps. Pretty.



Vandalism spoils art. Or is it art in itself? I was finding hard to decide. lol. No no it's bad it's bad! Please don't kick me!



Steps we came down. Oh so many of them! Hope we don't have to climb up!



The two buildings between which we were standing are actually one!



Ma with a statue



Cop car - Renault - I guess no surprise there



We walked to the base of the Effel. Saw a huge line for the tickets to go to the top. And we ran away.
Tip: Apparently these tickets can be bought in advance. Do that. Because the line starts very early in the morning.

The Effel is a marvel of engineering. Due to the unique structure, it weighs much lesser than it would have otherwise.

We walked away.
Next in line: Arc de Trioumphe

A long walk. The dreaded millions of steps, and another short walk took us to the metro station. Two metros later, we were there.

Arc de Trioumphe





A detailed look. Well zoomed in look. Ok fine! I'm just showing off the camera!









Gotta say. Amazing statues in Paris. Bad metro. And long tunnels for metro stations. Very very long. And dingy! Ok I'm done cribbing. lol.

We were on our way to Louvre.
And The Da Vinci Code was playing in my head.
Well, to be honest, it was just the first couple of pages playing.
I couldn't recall the rest. lol.

While I was lost in all these thoughts, we reached the metro station.



We walked out.



Now where? I asked Dad. I don't know the exact location, he said.
And so, we walked around. Saw this beautiful building. Walked around it, next to the pretty river. And we reached a bridge with curiously shiny railings.
On going closer, we realized that the shiny things were infact brass locks. People write their wish, and put it up there.

The building we saw outside the metro station (later we realized it is the Royal Palace)



The curiously shiny bridge




We realized the beautiful buildings we had earlier seen was The Royal Palace. And inside it, was the Louvre Musee.

Inside the Palace



We walked in. Click click went the camera.

We found the Louvre Musee! Finally!





Dad is really into art. So we decided he'll go inside the museum and see the art. While I opted to walk around outside.

Around the Louvre:







Again, all pictures from inside are courtesy my Dad.

I will be putting up the pictures from inside the Musee in the next post as I have reached the limit here.

We met up at a designated time and spot.
And made our way to Republique. We had a nice leisurely lunch after all the walking around.
And then made our way to the station where we would catch our bus to Brussels.

The bus was on time. And we were on our way to Brussels.

It had been a wonderful day in Paris.

[samarth.bhatia]

This is especially for the art lovers:

































Hope you enjoyed it so far.

Next Up: BRUSSELS

[samarth.bhatia]

The size of my hand v/s the size of my laptop
OR
Why I haven't completed this travelogue yet.

This is a short story of how I wrote almost 70% of the post once, and almost 80% of it the next time.
My hand being big, kept touching the Mouse Touchpad. And the space where you write the post kept getting un-selected.

And unfortunately, both the times it got unselected, I happened to press BAckspace. Which basically works like the back button on Chrome.
And hence what ever I wrote disappeared.

Twice.

And it is because of the love I received for this thread that I am going to write it again.

End of Story.

Coming soon: Brussels

[samarth.bhatia]

Hi Guys,

My third attempt at writing this part of the travelogue.
Hope I complete it now.

------------------

We were on the bus back to Brussels.
It had left Paris at the designated time. And since we were at the very edge of town, we were on the highway pretty quickly.

It had been a long last 36 hours.
We were tired. And we were injured.
But we were happy having seen parts of Amsterdam and Paris.

After about 3 hours, the Bus entered Brussels.

But I hardly noticed that.
Why?
That was because I could hear John Lennon singing Imagine. In my head.
Why?
Well, I was still thinking about how easy and, well literally trouble free it was, going from one country to the next.

I had not noticed when we had entered France from Holland when travelling from Amsterdam to Paris.

But this time, the Sun was shining brightly.
So it wasn't hard to see a Blue board. One on each side of the road, Stars in a circle formation, with the word "Belgium" in the center.
International border. Crossed over, with less intensity than the Delhi-Haryana border I cross regularly on my way to Faridabad!

Well. I was still tired. So I had my eyes peeled, staring outside for a sign saying "Radisson". We knew that the hotel was a short walk from the bus stop.
And just before the bus stopped, I saw a nice inviting entrance with a sign:
"Park Inn". Oh!
Well we got off. I walked to the Park Inn.
And naughtily peeking under the big big letter was "by Radisson"!

We checked our print outs to confirm. There it was "Park Inn by Radisson:.
We checked in, and went to relax in our room.

----------

Injury: My feet were aching. I had been thinking it's normal since we had walked quite a lot.
But there were some specific points under my toes.
I bent to check - The chhhaaaalaas had attacked!
(Also called boils?)

I was hoping we wouldn't have to walk to much to get dinner.

------------

It was past normal dinner time.
We walked out (ouch ouch ouch!)
After finding most places closed, we had to settle again for Turkish food.

It was time to settle in, and sleep.

-------------

In the morning, we took a map of the city from the reception.

We picked some POIs and made our way to the metro station.
After some difficulty, we found the ticket counter.
And the man behind the glass wasn't too helpful.

We decided since we probably wouldn't be moving around so much today, it would be better to not buy full day pass.

The idea was, since we weren't in the center of the city, we hadn't had anything Belgian yet. So our breakfast had to be Belgian.
But by the time we got to our destination, we were starving.
So we pretty much walked in to the first place we saw.

"Quicky" - a fast food joint. Damn!

---------------

Coming up: POI 1: The Grand Place