Brugge

It's a bit daunting, having had a concentrated few days without much record keeping. Well, I took a lot more photos than usual, but I can't put them all on here. I haven't even put photos up from the last post yet! Where do I start? I suppose I'll just type and see what comes out.

Last week was the half-term break. There were a few day activities for the girls, including a morning walk around the frosty countryside that seemed to exhaust them. But the main activity (as far as I was concerned) was our trip to Belgium.

We left Malvern at about 3pm on Thursday, and drove down towards Dover, and onto the Eurotunnel train at Folkstone. An interesting experience, driving in through the train carriage, seeing all the doors, and the emergency procedures requiring us to keep windows and sunroofs half open. There wasn't much view, 110 feet below the sea bed. But after 35 minutes, we stopped in Calais, and zoomed out onto the A16 motorway, heading north to Belgium.

The TomTom satellite navigation toy was quite useful. We have discovered that sometimes it gives spurious advice: rushing past an exit on the motorway it told us to go across the roundabout, take the second exit. But generally it's quite good if you listen carefully and occasionally cross-check with the screen map. It took us straight into Brugge (or Bruges, if you speak Francais; or perhaps Brooj if you speak Strine). It miscalculated where number 8 on our one-way street was, necessitating a second iteration through the one-way system - but that's nothing worth griping about. Overall, I was very pleased with it.

But the satnav wasn't the only new toy. I also bought a little 150W inverter, to power the laptop on the long car trip. The "Purble Place" (what a silly name) game kept Stephanie and Helen occupied the whole time! Maybe I should be embarrassed.

It was about 11pm local time (1hr ahead of GMT) when we arrived, so no exploring. We didn't get up until about 8am, and breakfast (museli, ham, cheese, bread, chocolate milk, fruit juice, coffee) took a little while to dispatch, so the sightseeing started a little later than we might normally have planned. But we walked through lots of interesting parts of the city. We took a horse-and-carriage ride through the old quarter, which placated the girls for a little while. The camera shutter was kept busy - not purely because of the scenic nature of the place, but also because I had decided that there were too many missing memories from earlier trips. We visited the Market square, the Belfry, the Burg town hall, a rennaissance museum, a fish market, and a cloistered nunnery, some defunct windmills (the old fashioned type) amongst other things. (There were dozens of modern electricity generating windmills around the place, although they weren't visible from ground level in the old part of the city.)

We could hardly have been luckier with the weather. It was certainly rather cold in the morning - I don't think my fingers woke up until lunch time - but it was a beautiful sunny day.

Sunday's schedule had us off to visit Gent. I managed to convince the navigatrix that the best way would be via a bridge to South Netherlands/Mittelburg (to tick off another country and see a genuine dyke), and through the Antwerp ring road system. We didn't have a printed map, so the satnav was very useful. Unfortunately, we didn't see much of the North Sea from our 5km bridge, because it was a tunnel. And a toll road as well. But that was ok. We saw some genuine dutch windmills, and dykes, and dozens of tractors. It was certainly very flat countryside.

The satnav directed us to somewhere in the centrum of Gent, but experience taught us that slight misinterpretations could lead to one driving the wrong way up a tram track. That aside, we managed to find ourselves a place to park, and then explored the town, some churches, a cathedral, a tourist office, and a castle. A waffle shop had been on the agenda, but our parking meter didn't permit that. We headed back to Brugge - less than an hour away.

There was some disagreement about what to do next, and then getting separated during a parade (which was visually ok, but aurally abusive) meant that we didn't get to our canal boat tour.

Sunday morning, checkout, and a brisk walk delivered us to the canal boat queue in time for the first cruise of the morning. We undertook ice-breaking duties on our tour. At only 5mm thick, it was easy enough to keep thoughts of Titanic out of ones mind. The driver (captain?) gave a commentary in four languages, in a voice about 14 octaves below middle-C, barely intelligible above the generic-european-language rabble behind us. We caught a few snippets, but most of the value was visual. I don't think the girls took their eyes off the breaking ice to look at the scenery once.

After a brootwurst mit broot to warm up, we searched for a decent waffle shop before our trip home. We found one, but were sorely disappointed with what we ended up with. It wasn't until the Vins de Calais shop that our spirits soared again. From there to the Eurotunnel was the first time that we accidentally found ourselves (well, ok, I was driving) on the left hand side of the road. But those Calais folk must expect that sort of thing, don't you think?

After a thoroughly forgettable hamburger for lunch at the Eurotunnel terminal, we were the last car onto our train. Keeping the guard talking about vaguely technical things somehow led to my invitation to the cabin of the locomotive (at the back of the train) for a chat with the deputy driver. The 3.5 hour trip from Folkstone to Malvern was quiet (thanks to the PC) interrupted only by the occasional request for a toilet stop. Christopher was very pleased to see us!