Panoramic Europe Tour - Day 1

On may 21st, 230 am, we set out on the tour. I was accompanied by my parents, my brother Nitin and Anannya, his wife. We leave from Birmingham early in the morning and move towards Folkestone from where we’d catch the Eurotunnel, a tunnel which passes under the English Channel.

Soon we’re next to a railway track and the bus enters a huge coach of the train. The train was a string of huge containers into which all sorts of vehicles could fit. As the train moves it suddenly enters a tunnel and that’s all we could see for the next 40 minutes or so. After the 40 miutes, the train comes out of the tunnel. No signs of water anywhere. We could’ve still been in England. But they told we were in France so we believed them.

From Calais we head for a chocolate factory in Belgium. A small cottage industry with loads of chocolate and luckily free samples too. Chocolates were there in all shapes and sizes. I disregarded buying a few because all shapes and sizes would be the same once they entered India and melted.

After lunch, we head to Brussels. We enter Grand Place, the central market square of Brussels. It is surrounded by guild houses, the city's Town Hall, and the Bread House. One of the most important tourist destinations in Brussels, Grand Place is an architectural marvel with larger than life gothic structures. Built in 1402-1455, the Grand Place has been declared a wolrd heritage site by the UNESCO.

Next, from Grand palace we move through a busy street downhill to catch the world’s most pictured wee. The Manneken Pis was quiet different from all pictures and imitations I had ever seen. It was way smaller than expected. I mean the statue. It was black and not bronze as I had thought it to be. On many occasions, the statue is dressed in a costume. We happened to catch one of the occassions as it was dressed in a black suit with a bow tie.

We next head to get some foreign exchange as we still didn’t convert our British Pounds to Euros. Unfortunately it was 430 pm and all the foreign exchange centers and many other shops shut by 4. Strange as it may seem, 430 is too late to get foreign exchange in the capital of Belgium.

Then we go to see the Atomium. The structure built in 1958 was just built for an Expo. The Atomium is a unit cell of an iron cell magnified 165 million times. Each atom is represented by a huge steel ball with a diameter spanning 18 m.

After seeing the Atomium, we retire at a hotel at Strasbourg in France on the German border. The next day we would head to black forest and the cuckoo clock factory in Germany