Today had a little bit of everything. We woke up in our hostel in the center of Rotterdam and ended in a luxury hotel in the very center of Brussels, and we mixed in biking, tourism, laundry and Mexican food!
After breakfast at the hostel we fell in love with, we got our bikes out of their secure storage closet, loaded our bags, and bikes to Rotterdam Centraal, where we loaded our bikes on the IC Brussels train and crossed into Belgium. Being the warmest day of the trip, we decided with a couple minutes to spare to jump off the train at Mechelen to see the city and bike the rest of the way into Brussels, and the impromptu decision worked out beautifully.
Mechelen’s Grote Markt is gorgeous, and we had drinks before taking a relaxing bike ride mostly along canals into Brussels with perfect sunny biking weather. We passed an industrial area and had to navigate some busy streets to get to the Marriott Grand Place, which could not have been more perfectly located for us. After a quick first visit to Grand Place, one of the world’s great city squares, we were able to lock our bikes in the Marriott’s basement garage, then checked into a great room.
We then tackled the two big chores of the trip: laundry and finding bike boxes. Luckily both were nearby, and Tammy managed a load of laundry while Noah and I visited Velofixer, a huge bike store and Brompton folding bike dealer that treated us very well. They gave us the first bike box and promised more later, and we proudly carried the box back to the launderette and then back to the hotel. All worked well!
We found a Mexican place for dinner around the corner from the Marriott, then explored central Brussels a bit more (including the famous peeing boy statue) before calling it a night.
Dan – Tammy – Noah 
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