Day 4 was anything but the simple day that I had planned in my head.  I was going to head toward Luxembourg City via Brussels, planning on doing a couple other things in Brussels but other events decided to impact that a bit. 

 

I have a habit of avoiding TV when I am traveling.  I also decided to sleep in until 8 and start packing then for my travels instead of trying to be out of the hotel before 8.  After packing up, I was down stairs checking out around 8.45.  The lady checking me out asked where I was heading and then said something had happened in Brussels, all train services had stopped.  I sat down in the lobby and looked up the news on my phone.  Wow, to say the least.  I can't say that I would have been close to the airport at the time of the attacks, but I was going to be headed that way.  I had also walked by the Metro Station that was attacked a couple days earlier.  Really put stuff in perspective.

 

I still had to travel though.  After a couple quick texts, I planned a route toward Liege and then on to Luxembourg.  I had to avoid any trains that originated in Brussels or any that was headed that way.  I walked out on the street and started toward the Metro Station.  As soon as I was out on the street, I was shocked by the military and police presence.  It was easy to see that the country was on alert.  I had about a 5 minute walk to my station.  I would estimate I walked by a good 20 people showing guns, plus a few SWAT style vehicles in the Antwerp Square.  Needless to say, the day had changed. 

 

I did manage one last waffle at the station and boarded my train to Liege.  We stopped and were held several times on what was supposed to be a 90 min ride.  I knew that I just had to roll with the punches today.  The news was filtering out on how bad the attacks had been.  Most people that I talked to didn't have cell service, but I appeared to.  I made it Liege, which was actually somewhere I wanted to see because of Santiago Calatrava's train station there, but I wasn't supposed to have time on this trip.  Now I did, because it looked like I was going to be stranded for awhile.  It was beautiful by the way.

 

 

After waiting out more delays, about 2 hours, I was off to Luxembourg.  The train stopped and was held several more times, but I eventually made it.  So much for seeing much of Luxembourg in the daylight.  My hotel was right across from the train station though. 

 

I hate that I couldn't see the majority of the city in the daylight, and I knew I needed to leave fairly early the next day.  The Old Town portion of the City is surrounded by rivers and gorges.  Absolutely stunning, even at night, but my pictures didn't do it justice.

 

Since I couldn't get decent pictures at night here are a couple from Google of the setting during the day.  I will have to figure out another trip to explore it some more in the future.  But I did get to see all of it at night though.  What a weird day, but I managed to continue my travels.