… is that the blood count has gone up yet again.

The bad news is that it hasn’t gone up enough and the people in the hospital don’t want me to travel.

Despite the racket in the reception last night, I did manage to go off to sleep quite easily in the end and I was flat out until all of … errr … 04:38.

But even so, I was back asleep until the alarms went off at 06:20.

I had my medication and then a shower and a good clean up. But I was so bust sorting myself out that I forgot to have a coffee. And with no water or anything to drink, I had a thirst that you could photograph.

But I was out early and down to the station where, when I was buying my ticket, I heard them announce a train to Leuven. So I RAN – yes, RAN, dear reader (and you’ve no idea how pleased that made me) for the train and leapt aboard.

And it was then that I realised that I had forgotten to buy any breakfast either.

But there’s a supermarket at the back of the station at Leuven so I picked up some bread rolls and at them as I marched across the city.

I was early for my appointment so I settled down in a comfortable seat, and bang on time, the nurse came to see me and I was all plugged in and hooked up.

When the doctor came to see me, he told me that my blood count had only gone up to 9.3. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this time last year it was at 13.0 and they were happy to let me go a-wandering off.

Not this time, though.

They want me back in 3 weeks time, so I spent the afternoon in between sleeping having a discussion with Rachel about a cunning plan.

Kaatje came to see me too. I’d had two more bills from the hospital so I handed them to her to pass on to my health insurance people.

When they threw me out, I wandered back downtown.

My route took me down to the Kapicijnenvoer for a change, and outside the Sint rafael Ziekenhuis I noticed that they had dug up the street completely.

It’s quite an impressive piece of work that they are doing.

In the town centre I stopped at a couple of places- the Carrefour, the Loving Hut and the Kruidvat for some supplies, and then I caught the train back to Brussels and my hotel.

Later on, I went out again. Alison had discovered a vegan and gluten-free restaurant called Moon at the back of the cathedral so we met there. It’s a simple buffet where you pay for the food by weight.

Delicious it was too and this will go onto our list of places to revisit, although it’s a bit amateurish in the way that it’s run. The rice ran out and “there’s no more now until tomorrow” – that kind of thing.

We went down to the Gare Centrale for a coffee and a good chat afterwards.

Later, we went outside and I put Alison onto her bus home. Once she’s ridden off into the sunset I had a bit of a loiter around outside.

With all of the photos that I’ve taken of Brussels over the years, I’ve never taken one of the Central Station. It’s not very impressive in the daytime, but at night it’s something else.

The exterior of the station at the Carrefour de l’Europe never used to be very impressive.

When I lived here it was just one main street with traffic just about everywhere, but not the traffic has been blocked off and it has been turned into a pedestrian zone.

The addition of a few pillars and arches, and a few cleverly-positioned streetlights make the place look really good.

From there I went for a little wander around in the dark, boldly going where I haven’t gone for quite some considerable time.

My perambulation took me past the Place de la Vieille Halle au Blés where the statue of the famous Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel stands sentinel.

He’s come out quite nicely in the subdued street lighting.

Now back at my hotel, and 205% of my day’s activity – 16.2kms – I’ve walked today. And it feels like it too.

I’ve made my butties for my journey tomorrow and now I’m off to bed. I have an early start in the morning.

05:20 to be precise.

carrefour de l’europe gare centrale bruxelles belgique

carrefour de l’europe gare centrale bruxelles belgique

carrefour de l’europe gare centrale bruxelles belgique

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