4th December 2019
Hello! and a big old welcome from Bruges, It was an early start this morning got up at 4.45am and started to get ready, it's weird how I naturally get up between 5/6 every morning but the morning I set an alarm I don't want to wake up! We are all bathed and on the road by 6.15am.
We make our way down to Le Shuttle in Folkestone nothing too exciting to report, Dexter was so well behaved. We stopped at Starbucks at stansted so he could have his breakfast and of course I had a lovely coffee! We arrive at the Shuttle around 10.15am so we had a little wait until our 11.20am take off. The tunnel crossing was so easy and it only took about 30mins in the tunnel, again Dexter was brilliant the whole way through we turned him to be forward facing so he could see us while in the train - he laughed alot!
Arriving in France we start to head off along the road when Leon's says why don't you plug your phone into the car and play some music, so I set the maps on my phone to where we are going and plug mine into the car. It's at this point when things go just a little bit wrong, the carplay in the car won't work meaning we can't see the map on the screen in the car anymore and whats worse the music isn't working either!!
After trying every setting possible on my phone and the car we finally pull off the road to reset the car i.e switch it off, wait 10 seconds and restart it - works a treat and we now have maps again!! Just in time too as we are arriving into Bruges.
The hotel is lovely and our room is very nice, after dumping off our stuff we head off to have a look around, we find one of the Christmas markets which looks lovely selling all kinds of stuff like baubles, chocolates and of course jager bombs (well it would be rude not to right?). We continue walking around and this place looks amazing, very clean, lots of shops, bars and resturants. We stop off for something to eat and end up having a tasting menu for 2 which included - Mussels in blonde beer, meatballs in cherry beer, Flemish beef stew in dark beer, veal blanquette in white beer and rabbit granny style in blonde beer, all of which were extremely tasty. Well we are stuffed and tired now so good night from all of us xx
Today starts as all good days start, finding Starbucks! As we head outside this morning it's was a bit of a shock how cold it felt, don't get me wrong 0 degrees sounds cold but oh boy it feels cold too! After finding coffee we take a lovely stroll around Bruges along the way we found the Christmas ice skating rink, a lovely chocolate shop were they make all of the chocolates in the shop and a H&M to get a hat and scarf.
We also found the second Christmas market, it seems the markets like to sell jager bombs which is handy because I like to drink jager bombs :) and I did.
We are off to the torture museum today (which is actually what you think it is - a museum about torture!) We figure this is a good place to take Dexter so he can see for himself what happens if he is naughty. After the museum we popped into the waffle house next door for some delicious waffles and an irish coffee. We head back to the hotel for a little rest and to drop off our shopping.
Bruges is a pretty place to visit the buildings are all lovely, theres plenty of shops, bars and resturants and to be honest it's really easy to drive to.
Late afternoon we head out again this time there's a shop Leon wants to take me to, it's a beer shop and my word there's a lot of beer! Theres shelves from floor to ceiling and rows and rows of beer and it's all brewed in Belguim.
For this evenings dinner we head back to the main square where the Christmas market is and find a restaurant, I had burger and fries and Leon had mussells and fries. One good thing about this hotel/holiday is that we have plenty of English channels on the TV as Dexter has to go to bed we are stuck in the room watching some TV. Unfortunately I'm having issues with the photos again some are the wrong way round and they aren't in the right order - I can't seem to sort this out so you'll have to tilt your head.
Today starts how all good days start, finding Starbucks.....sounds familiar? Well actually no it's not the same as yesterday, the weather is not very nice today it's dull and drizzly. Plus when we leave Starbucks I say to Leon' is your coffee ok?' 'Yes' he says 'its fine' and I reply 'mine doesn't taste right', but he says 'its fine just shut up....' as we are walking along I say again 'my coffee isn't right', so Leon says 'here have mine' I try his and it's fine so I give him mine and then he can taste mine was completely wrong - I keep his though and he puts up with my horrible coffee.
We have a few things we want to do before we leave, some more shopping! We want to get Dexter something from Bruges to put on the Christmas tree. It's a nice 10/15 minute walk through town from Starbucks to the Christmas market, we get the rest of the stuff that we wanted and decided that we would head back to the car and then back to Le Shuttle and see if we can get an earlier train back. Once we are back at the car we load up Dexter and the shopping and drive out of the car park, it was lucky we did decide to head back earlier as when we drove out of the car park it was pouring down with rain!
We get back to the Le Shuttle in good time it took us about 1.5 hours, the roads were nice and clear but the weather still isn't great. When we arrived we were offered an earlier train, which was great so now we leave at 2.20pm rather than 3.50pm, BONUS!! We pop into the duty free place and have some food etc, next we head over to the boarding area nice and early and queue up ready to go only to find out our train is now delayed by 40 minute :( The journey back through England is awful, we got stuck in traffic and bad weather all the way back - we finally arrive home at 6.30pm and crack open some lovely Belgium beers. That's it for this trip, just a short and sweet one but a good one :) xx
