We slept like rocks! All that walking and getting back to our hotel at 11 PM had made us tired. We knew we had the time to sleep in so we did. Or at least as much as we could. The sun comes up pretty early (4:45ish) in Berlin this time of year. We went down and had breakfast, stopping to talk to the front desk clerk/manager, Yost, who is the son of the owners.
He offered to call us a cab, which we gladly accepted. Our legs muscles and my knees were shot from the previous days walking. We ate breakfast, went upstairs and gathered our bags and came down to check out. We only had to wait 2 or 3 minutes for the Cab to show up (try that in the US!) and we were off to the train station. We had purposely booked this hotel due to its closeness to everything we wanted to see and the train station. We had planned on walking, it ended up being a short cab ride.
We walked it, found our platform and waited on the train. We were a little early so the platform was occupied by another train, no big deal. The trains run pretty much on-time in Europe. When it's time to get on, you better hustle. We had asked one of the station attendants where our car would be. Knowing this ensured we got on the correct car and didn't have to fight the crowd to find our seats.
The train interior was very nice. Clean, a comfortable blue-gray and had large windows to view the passing countryside on our way to our connection in Cologne.
Sky comtemplates the trip on his first train ride from Berlin to Liege.
Comfort class-Sky looks out the window on the way to Liege.
A toast with Coke in the dining car.
It was a six hour train ride. About noon, we went to the restaurant car and had lunch. Sky had a chicken dish, I had pasta with meatballs and we toasted the trip with our Cokes.
We had just under 40 minutes in Cologne. We found our platform off of one of the many info signs, fortunately it was nearby and we boarded the train to Liege via Aachen. A little under 2 hours later, we were in my old Southern Air stomping grounds, the city of Liege.
I like Liege. It's centered on the Meuse River, dates back to pre-Roman times, is a college town and most of the people speak English as well as their native French.
The Meuse River in Liege--just across the street from our hotel.
We went to our hotel, the Ramada Inn, which is one of the hotels I used to stay in when I was there with Southern Air. I knew the Front Desk clerk! We checked into our room, one of the rooms I had actually stayed in before and went out for dinner.
For this evening, I had planned on taking Sky to one of my favorite restaurants; La Brasilia. A Brazilian steakhouse, their Steaks on a Plank are to die for. They have their Menus in French, German and English and are very accomodating to their guest.
We walked about 15 minutes down to the city centre, past Eisenhowers European HQ with pointing out several places to Sky I used to frequent.
Ike's HQ-right across the street from several restaurants/pubs.
One of my favorite restaurants from my Southern Air days-La Brasilia.
Awaiting our "Steak on a Plank" at La Brasilia.
Dinner was great-Sky couldn't eat all his. We walked back to our hotel and laid out our clothes for the next day. We planned on heading southeast to La Gleize and then continuing on to Bastogne.
train to liege
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