Day Two 19th

With the Eurostar booked for 0857 we were up bright and early and raring to go. Being a Sunday, breakfast in the hotel did not commence until 730 so we decided to ignore this and snuck in early to get the ball rolling. It was just as well we did as this smooth start to our day ended once we reached St Pancras station. The Eurostar offices were easy to locate you just had to follow the mounting queue. Already people were hunting tickets and there were none to be had. Even having made reservations there was still a very long wait to retrieve ours with the 2 staff on duty only letting in 2 people at a time to the 10 available automated machines! It is no wonder things spiralled down hill for them during the course of the day.

St Pancras station - actually at 8am not pm!

With our train now being called we were hurried through security then flashed through customs. After walking the entire length of the train (and there were about 18 carriages) to find our carriage we settled in around our table seating. The train left on time though did have to travel at a slightly slower speed due to ice and snow so we arrived in Brussels (Belgium being our third country for the day having travelled through France) only about 15 minutes late. This was of no huge concern as we knew there was sufficient time before our connecting train.

It's good to have a big strong spud around the house

Seasoned travellers!

Bonjour from Calais

The station at Brussels is not the nicest of places but it was easy to navigate through and we were able to find lunch with no issues. Nathan and Abbey wandered off to find further supplies for our trip and came back with a enormous baguette sticking out the back of Nathan’s backpack. Yes, he looked just like a local already.

Not much to see at Brussels Station

The train journey between Brussels and Frankfurt was fairly uneventful. The German ICE trains are quite comfortable and, unlike the Eurostar, there were sufficient power points so we flashed up the laptop and the kids watched a movie whilst Nathan read and I attempted to look past the driving snow at the landscape. We travelled through such places as Liege, Aachen, Cologne and Bonn on our journey. Our next biggest concern was that we would miss our connecting train in Frankfurt as there was only a time lapse of 13 minutes between them. This became more of a concern when it was announced we were indeed going to get in about half an hour late. Zac was panicking a bit but his concern was that he would have to stand for the following 3 hour trip if we needed to catch a later train. Our boy likes to travel in the lap of luxury – he has obviously been born into the wrong family!

On arriving in Frankfurt we made a run for it only to discover our connecting train had also been delayed. This proved a bonus as it was right on dinnertime and the natives were getting restless. The easiest place to grab dinner was the nearby Burger King, not so healthy but just the thing to raise the spirits after arriving in our fourth country for the day. An hour later and we were off again to our final destination of Munich. There were more DVDs for Zac and colouring for Abbey as we travelled via Aschenaffenburg, Wurzburg and Nuremburg. Abbey fell asleep around Wurzburg but the freezing cold air of Munich station at 2215 soon woke her up.

Our first meal on German soil

Frankfurt Station

We left the station behind us and wandered out into the Munich streets. I will say one thing at this point for German efficiency, unlike the footpaths around St Pancras which were thick with slush, the paths around Munich’s central station were gritted and completely cleared. Luckily for us, Nathan, ever the ‘logisticator’, had a pre prepared map of our route and we easily managed the short walk to the Art Hotel and made it to bed by 2315.