Anthony HortonAbout to leave the UK again. There's still about a week of our holiday left though, we're going to Liège, Antwerp and Ghent before we begin the three flights that will take us back to Sydney.
In Australia no trains exceed 160 km/h during passenger operations. NSW long distance services still run the antiquated XPT, a variant of the British HST/Intercity 125 design from the 1970’s. For Australia they de-rated the engines, reducing the maximum operating speed from 200 to 160 km/h. The limiting factor is really the track quality though, none of it is good enough to allow higher speeds.
After 5 trains in one day we made it to Liège, and ended up having an excellent but not very Belgian dinner in a Japanese restaurant. To compensate I did buy a locally made Liègoise beer.
In Australia "continental breakfast" typically translates to a sliced loaf next to a toaster, a few types of breakfast cereal, and if you're lucky some yoghurt. Here breakfast includes 8 types of cold meats, 5 types of cheese, fresh baguettes, bread rolls, croissants, pains chocolat, cinnamon and raisin scrolls, and a flan.
Ah yes, Australia is famous for the quality of its homemade waffles.
The lemon sorbet was rather nice, though.
Gare St Lambert may be nice when it's finished, but right now the concourse and, crucially, the lifts are a fenced-off building site, requiring you to drag yourself (and your luggage) up one big staircase and then down another to get to or from any of the platforms.
That wasn't much fun, but hopefully the rest of the journey from Liège to Antwerp, via two trains and a metro, will be easier.
Train number 1 is dirty, covered in graffiti, and only 3 carriages long, but the middle carriage does have an impressively large flip down seat area for people travelling with wheelchairs, bicycles or bulky luggage.
Train number 2, from Hasselt to Antwerp Central, is basically identical to train number 1 except for being a bit cleaner and less graffitied.
Antwerp Central station is a fairly impressive structure. There are platforms stacked vertically on three levels, with rows of cafes and shops on a floor between the upper and middle sets of platforms. The big glass roof and old facades are nice too.
The last train-ish vehicle for today was an Antwerp metro, but this ended up being more trouble that it was worth. There's nothing wrong with the tram-like vehicles themselves, it's the stations. At both ends of our journey the lifts were broken, along with almost all the escalators. Having to lug a heavy suitcase up and down broken escalators made the journey harder work than it would have been to just walk the whole way.
According to the hotel receptionist this is more or less the normal state of the metro meaning that if for whatever reason you are not able to easily manage stairs then the Antwerp metro is not for you.
Transporter accident in the lobby of our hotel. Puts our difficulties with the metro escalators in perspective!
I get the feeling that this is the sort of bar that you're going to either love or hate, but the place next door looks like a (crash) dive.
The Sint-Annatunnel, a 570 metre long tunnel that runs under the Scheldt river, linking the city centre with the left bank for cyclists and pedestrians. It was opened in 1933 and still has the original wooden escalators at each end, taking people and bikes 30 metres down to the tunnel.
Today we left Antwerp, and rather than catching the metro to Antwerp Central we walked 20 minutes. The bonus of this is that we entered the station through the main ticket hall, which is absolutely spectacular.
The train from Antwerp to Ghent went smoothly. The most notable thing about Ghent-Dampoort station was the bicycle parking. This photo shows maybe a fifth or sixth of the bicycle parking racks there, and most of them were in use.
During the walk to our hotel in Ghent we spotted a Citroën Ami electric microcar/quadricycle owned by a local cafe/bar.
First time I've been rewarded with a sticker for ordering a special in a restaurant!
The burger was delicious, as was the Saison Noire beer.
Ghent was lovely, but now the long journey back home to Sydney begins. First was a short walk, followed by a tram ride to Gent-Sint-Pieters station where we got on a train to take us to Bruxelles-Midi/Brussel-Zuid. Once in Brussels we will collect the rest of our luggage from the left luggage lockers, then get on another train to the airport.
Luggage collected (Gerald the bearded dragon had been guarding it for us), train to Brussels airport caught, and now we're relaxing in the airline lounge.
Boarding our first plane, a DAT LT A320 doing the flight from Brussels to Helsinki on behalf of Finnair.
The uneventful flight from Brussels to Helsinki took about 2 hours 10 minutes. We have a very short transfer in Helsinki, just long enough to walk between the gates. We'll be boarding this Finnair A350-900 soon for our flight to Singapore.
Landed in Singapore and now waiting to board our third and final plane, a BA 777 doing the Singapore to Sydney flight as a code share with Finnair.
Back home for 24 hours and it was time to pull the cover off the car. When it went under the cover the battery was showing as 44% charged, after 6 weeks it said 43%. There was a bit of a stale smell in the cabin, but that disappeared after a few minutes with the windows down.
Driving our car again does confirm that overall I do prefer it over the Mercedes EQE 350+ rental car that we had in the UK. The Merc was a nice car but being a base model from a premium brand meant it was missing a lot of quality of life features that came as standard with our BYD, such as the 360° camera system, HUD, and adaptive cruise control. I also missed the open feel that comes with our car's glass roof, and the absence of a frunk in the Merc was odd and unhelpful. Personally I think our Seal is a more stylish looking design, too. The one thing I will miss from the Merc is the speed limiter function. I really liked that in our old Hyundai i30 too, and I wish our Seal had it.
#ElectricCar #EV #ElectricHireCar #EVhire #EVrental #BYD #BYDseal #Mercedes #MercedesEQE
