Breakfast in London, Lunch in France, Dinner in Belgium

Wednesday it was time to bid farewell to London. We were all a bit sad to be leaving, but felt like we’d had a good look at London. No matter how long we had spent there, there would still have been things we’d like to have done. We got one last ride on the tube, negotiating our way across to St Pancras station with suitcases to catch the Eurostar to Brussels.

Last time we’d done Eurostar it had departed from Waterloo. The trains are still the same, but they now leave from a flash new international terminal at St Pancras station. Boarding the train is much like checking in at an airport, with check-in, passport control and of course security screening. The part of Eurostar that the kids had had most looked forward to was “The Chunnel”, but it was the most boring. Half an hour inside a tunnel with nothing to see out the window but black, is not really that exciting! It was much more exciting to emerge from the tunnel in a different country and see all the road signs in French.

The journey time to Brussels was only 2 hours as the train travelled just under 300km/hour for most of the way. We had fun watching the speed on the GPS, maximum speed reached was 303km/hour. There was time for a quick bite to eat from the buffet car somewhere in France, before changing to a slower (double decker!) train to Brugge (Bruges in French).

We are staying at a guesthouse in Bruges run by a very energetic and friendly lady called Tine. She came and collected us from the station in her green Renault van. Fortunately Tine is fluent in English as we don’t understand a word of Flemish! When it is written we can work some of it out, but spoken is impossible. We have the large 2 bedroom apartment here at the guesthouse – it feels enormous after living in a hotel room for a week.

We are about a kilometre from the centre of the old town, but it a beautiful walk through an old city gate and cobbled streets. There are far more bicycles than cars in Brugge as the streets are very narrow and it’s dead flat. Our first stop was the frites cart to sample the delicious fries – eaten with tiny forks. Wash them down with some delicious chocolates while sitting in one of the most beautiful squares in Europe and you have a perfect meal.

We have a kitchen here, so Anna and I headed to the Carrefour supermarket at the end of our street to find something for dinner. We loved supermarket shopping in the UK, but it is even more fun in a foreign language. We left with a lot more than dinner with yummy berries, French wine and ice cream all falling into the trolley. We had some sort of meat for dinner – I thought it was chicken but I’m pretty sure it was actually turkey. It was yummy anyway and it was nice to have a very simple home cooked meal rather than eating out. For dessert it was strawberries (what a treat to be having an extra berry season) and very soft stracciatella ice cream as we didn’t realise there was no freezer here!

We are going to try and have a slower day tomorrow, ready for the busyness of Paris coming up. Here is a pic of the kids at the end of another tiring day!