To Brussels by train

Monday 19-10-15 
We were sad to leave Ypres as it is a very beautiful and moving place but we needed to move so we were closer to our departure place of Charles de Gaulle Airport. We also had been told that there was a possibility of a train strike so we felt a bit apprehensive. Luckily the train strike was not going to affect the regional lines, only lines in Brussels. We made it safely to Brussels and checked the station out and purchased our tickets on the super fast train, for the airport on Wednesday.  We went back to using Air B&B and picked a property out due to it's location. It's less than a 5 minute walk to the railway station. Our host is a lovely French woman, Valerie and she is the single mum of a gorgeous 13 month old boy. Her house is made up of two huge open rooms, one for us and the other with a lovley little kitchen, a bathroom and then a divider for her and her son's bedroom. It is very unusual but very comfortable. Valerie showed explained that most of the Brussels city centre and sights can easily be done by walking and she then gave us a map to borrow. We set off and visited some interesting places. Our first stop was a little  disappointing as the magnificent Justice building was covered with scaffolding and there was alot of graffiti everywhere, even on some of the War Memorials. Our view was also marred by thick smog. Things improved dramatically as we visited many other areas of the city with well maintained and architecturally stunning buildings, particularly those in the market square. We had a lovely dinner in a restaurant that served mussels and Rob had been told to make sure he tried these. I had a paella with seafood including mussels and it was delicious. We returned to the market square after dinner to see the beautiful buildings all lit up. They were spectacular. We then found the famous Brussels fountain of the Little boy peeing. It is tiny and around this many of the shops sell Belgium chocolates and also replicas of the fountain. Some of the replicas are actually larger than the statue. All very funny over a small statue. We probably walked about 8 kilometres this afternoon but it did us good!