Brussels; Friday, 21 December, 2007

After a quick lunchtime exit from work, I headed up to St Pancras to catch the Eurostar. Just five weeks after its move to its new home, I was intrigued to find out what they had done to the station. The last time I had travelled from here was to go to York, virtually 4 years to the day before, and during its last few months in its old state as one of London’s more forgotten stations.

The transformation has been spectacular. The grim and dark station has been replaced with a light bright and airy space. Sadly, it appeared that, not everything was a shiny and spectacular as all the press hype of the previous few weeks had lead people to believe. Most of the shop units were still empty and the much-heralded push towards using electronic ticketing wasn’t working.

After four separate attempts to get my tickets out of the automatic machine I had to queue up in the ticket office, where they claimed that I must have used a completely different card to make my booking, which just happened to have exactly the same number as the one I was presenting! After a short discussion on this (and a tacit admission from the ticket office person that their systems were not up to scratch), they decided to rebook my tickets for the same trains and seat and reissue them that way!

Having negotiated the check-in, I walked through security to the departures lounge, to another disappointment. Whilst Waterloo had been light with lots of shops, cafes and a bar, St Pancras had one very small WHSmiths, a small bar and a small Café Nero’s and nowhere near enough seating.

Still, this was all made up for when the train departed. When I first went to Brussels in 2004 the train had taken over and hour and a quarter to wander through the suburbs of South East London and Kent, before finally reaching the channel tunnel. Today, we hit the tunnel exactly 30 minutes after pulling out of St Pancras, a bit of a change. In fact the journey is so fast from London to the Tunnel that you now spot that the train slows quite considerably to go through the tunnel, and then doesn’t really speed up again as it picks it way gingerly across the Northern French and Southern Belgium land, still undermined by the trenches of the first World War. Less than two hours after pulling out of St Pancras the train pulled into Brussels and I made a quick transfer to the hotel.

After checking in, I caught the tram back to Bourse and had a wander around the Christmas market that stretches around the Bourse and Grand Place area of the city centre. The Grand Place itself is turned into the focal point of the Christmas celebrations with a massive crib, Christmas tree and a light and sound show projected onto the Hôtel de Ville during the evening.

I watched the light show for the best part of an hour, whilst munching my way through a couple of hot waffles, and a glass of hot wine, before heading off to take in more of the city at night.

I caught the tram out to Heysel home to the Atomium, after the Mannekin-Pis; probably the next most famous Brussels land mark. By the time I reached Heysel the fog was starting to settle, and a heavy frost had already started, making the streets and parks look as if it had snowed.

The Atomium has recently been given a multi-million Euro clean and refurbishment, with the spheres now having sparkling lights embedded in them. Combined with the shine of the recently cleaned spheres and the light being reflected from the frost on the ground it made for a spectacular sight.

After looking around the area for a while, I headed back into town, stopping for another quick waffle, before heading back to the hotel and a good nights sleep.