Sunday 17/8 From Hasselt to Paris

We only woke up quite late. I was hoping a lot of people would have cleared out of the camp site by the time we were up, so that it would be a bit easier for us to get out of there. I was right, it was definitely a lot clearer there. We got packed and then we attempted to get our tent back in the bag. You might think that it would be quite intuitive how to fold this thing up, but it wasn´t. It was more like one of those metal logic puzzles where you have to get the ring off of it. The tent had to be folded in several ways to align the poles and their curves into the same plane. The instruction pictures really didn´t do it any justice!

Dani´s tent, the cow mach 2, was going to be left there. The broken strut, and the low cost of a new cow pattern tent that was a quick-pitch, sealed its fate. So, it was left there, along with our foam mattresses which we decided weren´t worth the effort of carrying around with us if they only cost five pounds each. So, we left the camp site, a wee bit lighter, much dirtier but with good times behind us and plenty of fun memories.

We got some brunch at one of the road-side stores on our way to the station; chicken hotdogs and coffee. Boarding the train was very organised because the police has corderned off the platform and only allowed limited numbers onto each train. We had to wait for the second train that arrived, making us wait on the platform about an hour. That was okay. The train itself wasn´t packed at all like on our way there.

When we arrived at Nord station back in Brussels we found where we had to leave from and set ourselves down. We had originally planned to post back all of our camping gear, but the post offices were shut on a Sunday and also it would have been very very expensive to do, when we thought about it. Instead, we sat ourselves down against a wall and waited for our train. We bought dinner at the food court; some fast food Italian (well, pasta anyway) and later we got some nice Belgian truffles and some chocolate of different varieties. Hehe, delicious.

We caught our train and soon found ourselves in Paris Gare du Nord. We used our expert Paris metro skills and made our way over to Paris Aust station where we would be departing from.

Our train was an overnighter, with us in couchettes once more. That was all right; they were cheap and comfy, and a lot of fun. We got onto the train and all slept quite quickly.