The food is overpriced and bland, the botanical gardens had been cut in half and later further reduced by two separate road building exercises, the majority of the urban architecture might as well have been Portsmouth and not the good bits of Portsmouth , and a few places of Brussels smelled of wee. Even the European Parliament building wasโฆ forgettable, as you may have noticed from its absense in the previous list. And when I finally came to leave, the Eurostar terminal was terrible: when the security gates finally opened to let people in, a queue larger than the Eurostar terminal itself formed in the main station area just to get into the security area, but when we were past that and past the subsequent double-passport check , we were immediately stuck in another queue to wait for the platform itself to open.
It would be nice to finish this series less than a decade after the actual trip. I will never know. There was a curious sight on a road parallel with the train: a wheelbarrow in the boot of an ordinary saloon sedan car.
Brussels Nord station seemed half maintained, half run-down. Some of the vending machines had security windows. Finally I returned to Rotterdam, making the first city also the final city stop of this trip. The first night here I was exhausted, having pushed my feet and legs past their limits, and was in no position to explore properly; now though, now I could. Eventually a member of staff showed up, but it took a while.
My own fault for not reading the small print! Panorama of one of the parks in Rotterdam. Rotterdam is full of greenery โ trees and grass abound โ and the people are friendly.
Lots of weed in the air, too. The overall effect is decent enough, if not outstanding. After some random walking, I found a Dutch street market, where a fruit-and-vegetable salesmen was yelling out their special offers. Sunโฆ โฆrain. Sweet foods are far less sweet in The Netherlands compared to the UK, which may explain why people are so much thinner in The Netherlands despite the combined stereotypes of heavy weed use and weed leading to munchies.
