{"id":305,"date":"2025-10-07T17:42:37","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T17:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/?p=305"},"modified":"2025-10-07T17:42:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T17:42:37","slug":"belgium-day-1-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/?p=305","title":{"rendered":"Belgium Day 1: Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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We are traveling directly from Halifax to Frankfurt, then connecting to Brussels.  The final leg will be via train from Brussels to Bruges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our flight has been delayed by three hours.  Initially scheduled to leave at 7:30pm the flight is now leaving at 10:30pm  This is all due to tropical storm (hurricane) Lee.  The storm delayed the flight coming from Frankfurt, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things could have been worse, the flight could have been canceled all together as many flights were.  The only real impact to this delay is that we may miss our brewery tour, which is scheduled for Monday afternoon, we will try to reschedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We decided to stick with the original plan and head to the airport roughly at the same time as we originally planned.  This way Jessie, who is giving us a ride, won’t be too impacted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re hanging out in the Air Canada lounge, getting some food and a few, non-alcoholic, drinks before the flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today the plan is: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flight: Halifax to Frankfurt
Flight: Frankfurt to Brussels
Train: Brussels to Bruges
(Brewery Tour – Likely will not be there on time)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flight from Halifax to Frankfurt was fine, we had economy seats and I know I sound like I’m complaining, because I am, but the guy in front of me was heavy set and reclined the seat for the entire trip, Well his seat reclined a bit more than usual because of the heavy setttiness of himself and I had his seat in my face for the entire flight.  Hey, we got to Frankfurt, which was the goal.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Frankfurt airport is still the Frankfurt airport, simply aweful, as normal, nothing unexpected.  We filtered through the airport, from plane to bus from terminal to termial via bus, to finally gate.  We found our way to the plane that would finally take use to Brussels.   Though the flight was only an hour I do not remember the taxi and take off, definitely slept through that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we got to Brussels, cruising through the airport there was a breeze, probably one of the top 10 airports I’ve been to.  Great signage, clear indication of where services were.  We checked bags from Frankfurt to Brussels – found the carousel, was notified when our bags were coming up, no issues.  We then made our way to the train station under the airport – again signage took us right there, we found the terminals to buy tickets.  Making sure we we getting on the right train was a bit of a challenge, but that could also be because we were really tired by this point.  The train was here, the signage said the train was here, but there was no indication on the train that it was the right one.  We asked a conductor and he directed us to the right car and all was good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The train trip was pleasant, easy and comfortable.  It took us about 90 minutes to get to Bruges, with only four stops along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We decided, because we were so tired not to walk the 20 minutes to the hotel but rather get a taxi.  Good call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a bit of settling we needed some food so we went for a walk to the city center, not far from the hotel to find some of their world famous french fries.  We found two fry trucks on the square lined up to the one that was least busy and got each of us a pile of fries with mayo.  These were really good, hot, crispy and just slightly salty fries – perfect.  Since we are here in Bruges we had to get them with mayo, the way the locals have been eating them forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With some food in our bellies, too many fries actully, we did a quick walk around the two ajoined city squares.  One was the commerce center and the other more of a political center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this time it was time for some real food, so we found a spot on one of the squares (the commerce one) which was also recommended by Rick Steeves, and we each got some local beer, I got a tradiional one and Krista got a cheer blonde beer and a feed of the local mussels with fries, followed by some espresso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now is time to sleep, we’ve effectively been awake for abou 30 hours with possibly 3 or 4 hours of broken sleep mixed in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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We are traveling directly from Halifax to Frankfurt, then connecting to Brussels.  The final leg will be via train from Brussels to Bruges. Our flight has been delayed by three hours.  Initially scheduled to leave at 7:30pm the flight is now leaving at 10:30pm  This is all due to tropical storm (hurricane) Lee.  The storm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belgium","category-travel"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"mcomeau","author_link":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"mcomeau","author_link":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"We are traveling directly from Halifax to Frankfurt, then connecting to Brussels.  The final leg will be via train from Brussels to Bruges. Our flight has been delayed by three hours.  Initially scheduled to leave at 7:30pm the flight is now leaving at 10:30pm  This is all due to tropical storm (hurricane) Lee.  The storm…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/540blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}