Arrival in Brussels

We arrived in Amsterdam around noon on Friday after a very smooth KLM flight - they did a great job. Train trip to Brussels was delayed en route by about 3 hours so we arrived in a bleary-eyed state at our centrally located hotel around 7 p.m. The hotel is lovely and just a half block from the Market Square that dates from medieval times.
Surrounding structures were originally wood but these burned to the ground during some French invasion. Guild halls you see here were the replacements constructed in the late 1600's.
We decided on a two night hotel stay to sufficiently recover from the flight so were not really ambitious on our first full day. We did hop a cab to the Parliamentarium (sp?) at the E.U. to go to their visitor centre. Amazing story of this roughly 75 year project to integrate Europe: politically, commercially, culturally and with a unified monetary system. We lasted 2 hours and wished we had more energy to take it all in.
Easter Sunday was moving day to the Tauck ship M.S. Grace. As we had a bit of time to kill, we had hired a private guide to show us a number of homes built during Brussels' Art Nouveau period (roughly 1890's). Here's an example:
Honestly, this was a rip by the time we paid for the guide plus taxi to drive us around for a couple of hours. No doubt this is a sign of our early onset something-or-other.
Mid-afternoon, a Tauck bus brought us over to the boat - more on this experience to follow.

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