Austin to Paris to Brussels

We made it alive.   It was a long day and a half, but went pretty seamlessly.

OK, so this trip overseas for my birthday is a little different, as you can clearly see.  My intrepid local travel buddy, Christi, now has her passport and we're doing a little European tour for two weeks. This photo is us, looking a little rough as we had spent a whole day at work, flew from Austin to Atlanta, and had just gotten on the plane that would take us to Paris.  Bottoms up!

We landed in Paris the next day and immediately hopped a train to the border for a connecting train to Brussels, our first stop.  This is one decent shot I got of the French countryside as we sped by on our TGV train to Lille.

We spent a lot of time at the Lille station, where we changed trains.  Our connection was delayed for 25 minutes (our stopover was already 2 hours).   We had lunch (for me Camembert on a baguette with a Cafe au Lait) and wandered around looking for a seat.   I was regretting my decision not to wear my backpack after 10 minutes.  Did I mention that I was trying to minimize my luggage by carrying a backpack this time?  Urgh. 

We finally made it to Brussels, where we found our apartment building without much trouble (very close to Midi Station).  This is the view from our 6th floor apartment.  

We showered, put on PJ's and made ourselves stay up until the sun set...then we crashed!