Thursday, June 19 Belgium

From our wanderings last night, here are photos of the beautiful Victorian era indoor shopping mall, and the choice of Belgian waffles from a street vendor and a side street full of restaurants.  

After a great complimentary breakfast at the hotel, we retrieved euros from an ATM, and took a taxi to Brussel's Central Station. Jack worked on checking the automated scheduler while I went to the information window to obtain our tickets to Zeebrugge, the port where L'il Guy awaits.  

The train was spotless, silent and smooth for the hour ride to Brugge where we had to change trains to Zeebrugge. I managed to leave our tickets on the train and so had to purchase inexpensive tickets for the short hop to Zeebrugge. We got off the train and there we were – all by ourselves and no one around. I walked into what I thought was the train station that had been converted to a senior citizen's center where a group was eating and another was playing RummyCub. Luckily, a woman spoke English and she called a cab for us. It arrived in about five minutes and the cabbie took us the three miles or so right to the door of the Importer/Exporter Logistics Firm. I got in line behind five or six drivers who were bringing in or getting paperwork to pick up or delivery vehicles from a ship that had just anchored.

Our Shipping Company's Office in Zeebrugge

Our First Glimpse of L'il Guy being delivered to us from the port, sans front wheel covers

 They were so busy, it took one and a half hours to get the RV brought to us, sans front wheel covers. Jack quickly figured out they were inside because they had to remove them to anchor the vehicle on the ship. Everything was in perfect working order and we drove away using our new GPS looking for a gas station with Liquid Propane Gas (LPG) that we were told would be readily available – NOT!! 

We drove through very pretty countryside with quaint farm homes with loads of flowers and through a couple small towns on our way to our campground with no propane anywhere. We stopped for diesel fuel paying just over $6.00 a gallon, but way cheaper than gasoline.

We abandoned looking for the propane and went to the campground where we checked in and quickly left to find the station the woman at the desk told us would have propane. No luck there, but I used my new data plan on our phone to look up another station where the woman spoke English and showed us how to work the pump that is really meant for propane-powered automobiles and we didn't even need one of those dopey adapters that I worried so over during preparations. The propane took no time at all and then we stopped at an Aldi's, a grocery name we recognized. Same as the States, bulk quantities, limited selection, but we were able to get a few things for dinner plus bottled water, etc. Grocery shopping is a challenge because we cannot read the Flemish (Dutch) labels and things are just ….different! For example, Jack got a beautiful looking head of red leaf lettuce and when I pulled it out of the plastic bag, it came with its dirt ball!!!  

Back to the RV, absolutely exhausted, to find that our even with all of our electrical adapters, we still couldn't find one that fit the campground plug. The office was closed and so we spent the night without electric, but not really a problem because we cooked our dinner on the propane stove, the refrigerator was running our propane and it stayed light until after 10pm. Early to bed.

Quite a stressful day, maneuvering through the train stations, the shipping port, struggling to find propane, figuring out food shopping, and finding our electric situation was going to need some serious help. Ahhhh, the joys of travel.