Trip to Belgium and Holland

This is my first blog on any site........Just penning down my experiences when I went for a short trip to Netherlands and Belgium during my final year training at Insead.
The trip started on 15th April, 2006 from a place called Fontainebleau(around 100kms from Paris)........
We refers to Teltia, Mehta, Aaroh, Sandy and Yours truly :)

15th April 2006

This was one of the most awaited trip. We got up a quite early as had to catch a morning train from Paris. We had to walk from the village(Fontainebleau) to the nearest station(about 4 kms) to catch the train to Paris . We reached Paris at 7:15 and caught a train(Thalys, Belgium's Official Rail) to Bruges. It was two and a half hour journey. The very frequent announcements in the train were very irritating and to add insult to injury, each announcement was being made in 4 different languages- 3 of which were like Alien to all of us.

Finally we reached Bruges at around 11 a.m.. The city was very small and peaceful with canals all around and people having boat rides. We reached a hostel that we had booked. After freshening up, we hired bikes (had to submit our Passports to get those). Then we went around biking in the town and saw some wind-mills. The weather was awesome there. We finally headed towards the country side which we heard was the main sight-seein attraction there. It was a village named DAMME at a distance of around 5 kms from the main city. Riding bike along the canal side in the spring was one of the most exciting experiences. But the final destination was a little disappointment to all of us. It was far less than what we were told. We felt it was like any other village- the difference being it was cleaner, had roads and was well connected to the city. May be we had expected too much from it. We roamed there for a while, had a chilled beer and came back. We were told by some seniors that the city has one bar. But unfortunately we could not find any.

The final conclusion was that Bruges was only meant for relaxing. I recommend you all to give it a visit when you retire from work.

Finally we returned to our Hostel and had a good, long sleep.



16th April 2006

We caught a train at 11 in the morning to Brussels, the capital of Belgium. As soon as we came out of the station, the scene reminded us of our own Delhi . There was a road market as crowded as any such market in India. Some Pakis and Afghanis were selling all kinds of stuff like T-shirts, Jeans, Utensils etc. They were offering a discount to us when we enquired about some stuff and they found out that we were Indians. The roads had ditches at some places; nobody was giving a damn to traffic signals. We had our lunch in a Pakistani restaurant named "NOOR". The food was really awesome - chicken curry, rice, nan, dal, lassi; very hard to find in Europe, and that too at a reasonable cost.

Then after having lunch, we left for the Railway Station to catch the train to Amsterdam. The train was supposed to reach Amsterdam at 5 pm, but due to some problem in one of the stations in-between, it got delayed by 2 hours. It caused us further problems regarding our reservation of the apartment. The person supposed to give us the keys left assuming that we would not turn up. By the time we had dinner, it was already 10:30 pm.
Then we just went for a stroll to see the NightLife in Amsterdam. We came back at around 2 a.m.


17th April 2006

Got up a bit late in the morning, had a light breakfast and then started planning of what to see in Amsterdam.First we went to Madame Tussaud’s Museum. We got a little discount as we were students. At the entrance there were statues of two famous persons - Pierce Brosnan (James Bond) and Julia Roberts. We were asked to select one and they would click our snap, which they sell as a souvenir. We chose Julia. Inside the Museum, there were statues of so many celebrities- Bush, MJ, JLo, Dalai Lama, Pope, Diana, Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin and so many; only Mahatma Gandhi from our own India. We had a photo session there. Some of the statues were so real that one feels like as if the person standing is real. Then as a souvenir we bought the snap with Julia Roberts. We all also bought a special souvenir - our face embedded inside a glass cube. They took out picture and using the laser technology, embedded a 3-D picture into a glass cube.

Then after a quick lunch we had a cruise ride around central Amsterdam. It was a one hour ride where they told us some history about Amsterdam.The ride was very enjoying.


In the evening we went to the Bar and had some beer. There was also a girl dancing on the Bar's table.

Then we had dinner at some local restaurant, but saw that even Anil Kapoor and some other Bollywood Personalities had dined there.

After Dinner, we went to explore some unmentionable Places (famous in Amsterdam). There we roamed around for some time.

We came back early as we had to catch an early train to Paris.

All in all, it was a great trip for all of us....

Hope You enjoyed this Post.....

PS: Some parts are directly copied from one of my friend's (Mehta's) Description.