Bruges, Belgium, Sat 19 - Sun 20 Sept 09

We took a local train to Bruges (or Brugge) and our first impressions were of walking through a pretty little park next to a canal on a beautiful sunny day. A great start!

We weren't quite sure about our accommodation because we got to what we thought was the address and there was no sign on the door or anything. So we knocked on the door (whose could have been anybodys!) but luckily enough we were in the right place. The B&B owner ushered us into her home and proceeded to seat us and take us through all the admin.

She was a funny thing, very little english with a mix of French and Italian and even the odd Spanish word thrown in there too. But with a bit of work we managed to understand each other. She took us through everywhere we should go, where we should eat and drink and what to see. She meant well of course but to be honest it was quite overwhelming. Staying there was kinda like staying with a distant great aunt you've never met, lovely and talkative but you still can't help feeling a little ackward and out of place.

Armed with a map and a list of instructions we headed into Brugge in search of some lunch. We stopped at a road-side (well more of a lane really) cafe where I enjoyed a Belgium waffle with fresh strawberries and icecream! Delicious! Their waffles are so sweet and flavoursome.

With full stomachs we explored Brugge. The Markt (yes I spelt that correctly) was the main square full of cafes, the Belfry Tower and the Town Hall. Along a small street was another square called The Burg. No, wait, The Burg had the Town Hall and a pretty white renaissance style building too. There was also the church where the Holy Blood is (the Basilica of the Holy Blood) which is said to be a drop of Christ's blood.

We saw the horse drawn carts in the Markt and explored the beautiful churches, cobbled streets, canals, pretty gardens, old medieval bridges and antique markets. Brugge is an incredibly beautiful town. We also visited a lot of neat shops, Brugge is big on it's lace and chocolate!

We walked down the shopping district and came to a modern square next to the Concert Hall - a modern new architecture building. My feet were exhausted so we chilled there on seats next to a cool fountain for ages.

We had booked in for dinner at a restaurant near the Markt recommended to us by Maria, our B&B host. We were early so we chilled in the Markt watching the world (and horses) go by and enjoyed the beautiful atmosphere as the sun went down. Bruges really is something else at night, with the horse drawn carts, cobble lanes and old street lanterns it was like something straight out of a fairytale. Absolutely breathtaking.

Dinner was at a bar called Bier Brasserie Cambrinus. It was a great place with a cool atmosphere and a 400 strong beer selection. Seriously the beer menu was like a book! Check out the photo a little bit further down. Yep that is in fact the beer list! Crazy aye?!

Nick convinced me to be brave and I ordered a fruit beer, not easy since the fruit beer section of the book alone was about 6 pages! But I finally settled on a strawberry one. It was actually really good and I finished the whole thing! Only second time in my life I've finished a beer. Nick says it doesn't count since fruit beer "isn't really beer" but I still feel proud :)

The menu was weird so we took a gamble, ordering something a bit different. Nick went for a dish that we couldn't pronounce but contained beef so was reasonably safe. I went for a Rabbit dish. Nick's turned out to be a Beef Casserole and mine a Rabbit Casserole. Both stewed in beer enhanced gravy with greens, apple sauce and a side of frites (of course, this is Belgium!).

The meals were delicious, the meat soft and fall-apart yummy. Nick was happy because the chunks of beef were huge and more like chunks of steak. Rabbit tastes great, although a little tricky with the small bones. Just wish Nick hadn't kept making bunny jokes :( But the food really was outstanding. Staying at the strange B&B was worth it just for the restaurant recommendation.

I went on to order a rasberry beer (one of the most delicious drinks ever) and memorised the name (Timmermans Lambic Rasberry beer) so I hopefully can find it again and then after that a peach beer. I've never drunk so much beer in my life!

After dinner we took a stroll through the town which is absolutely magical at night. I would definitely recommend Bruges to everyone.

Sunday morning was interesting thanks to our accommodation choice. There wasn't a proper shower, only a bath with a hand held shower head attached to the tap, very tricky trying to work that one out. I think it's quite a common set up in Europe since a lot of old houses only have baths but it made for a weird start to the day. We shared breakfast with a young spanish couple who were very nice, and Maria kept trying to feed us up.

After we left the B&B we walked to one of the canal bout tour launch piers where we took a cruise around the Bruges canals in a little boat. A great way to see Brugge and it's pretty bridges and canal-side houses.

After that we queued for ages to get up the Bellfry Tower and sadly it cost a lot of money to go up a tower which had very restricted views because of a raised ledge and wire meshing. So definitely not worth it. We also stopped into the Basilica of the Holy Blood church but they had a service on (of course, it was Sunday) so saw some of the chapel but didn't see the actual holy blood relic.

Maria wasn't going to be home in the afternoon so she had given us keys to her house to go back and pick up our bags (very kind!) and we finished up our trip with a lie in the sun in the park while we waited for our train to take us back to Brussels and then on to London again.

I really had a wonderful time in Belgium. It's famous for it's beer, fries, waffles, mussels and tin-tin (a lot of food you'll noticed) and I indulged in it all (except the mussels - ick) and had a great weekend!

Brussels, Belgium, Fri 18 - Sat 19 Sept 09

Travelling by Eurostar makes life so much less stressful! Quick check-in times, minimal security check holdups and a guaranteed good seat. Love it.

Arriving in Brussels and unfortunately my first impressions weren't great. May have been the area we were in but the place seemed dirty, depressing and full of dodgy drunk people. To be honest it reminded me of some places in France.

Thankfully our accommodation made up for it with what turned out to be a nice 2* hotel who had upgraded us to a room with our own bathroom, yay! (we usually book shared bathroom rooms). It was very late at night so we stepped out to get some food (from some dodgy fast food place - not much open at midnight). Thankfully the bar next door saved us with some good cheap drinks.

Finally with content stomachs, we walked to the main centre, the Grand Place, where we saw the main town square all lit up in lights. Very beautiful and finally an area of Brussels I could love. The town hall was simply gorgeous. We picked a bar and found an outdoor seat to enjoy a drink and the view. Nick ordered a beer that came in a mini yard glass, it was very cool.

Saturday was always going to be a long day as we had Brussels to explore in the morning and then we were off to Bruges for the afternoon. Brussels is much nicer in the day time, but there still wasn't much in our area so we headed back towards the main town. There were lots of choc shops (yum!) and I enjoyed some morning chocolates. Ultimately Belgium is all about the food and drink. Good beer, yummy chocolates, waffles and fries. Yum yum!

At the Grand Place we found a small festival thing going on in the square with puppets, waffels, beer and a band with traditional dancers, and some crazy people dressed up as gollywogs (that was kinda weird). I tried an apple beer at the beer tent (yes I was drinking beer!) and Nick had an elephant beer (I'm sure it was called something else but it had a pink elephant on it). I managed half of the apple beer which wasn't bad for me. Nick took photos of me to prove I was drinking beer :)

We noticed little statues of this cherub boy peeing and they were everywhere in souvenir shops etc so we figured he must be popular and famous in Brussels for some reason so we set off to find him. He was called the Mannequin Pis and is a little statue down the road from the Grand Place of a boy peeing into a fountain. Now why this is famous I still don't know as he was a bit uneventful and even worse they'd dressed him up in what looked like a little sailor costume, but I'm sure there is a good story behind it.

We decided to follow one of the walks on our map called the comic strip walk. Brussels is famous for it's comics like TinTin and the walk highlights graffiti comic art on the street and shops dedicated to comics, tin-tin and art. It was quite neat walking round and spotting random art on the walls and buildings around the city and we did see some pretty cool art stores. The walk was huge though so we only did one section of it, as we had to get on a train to Bruges.

Saturday was such a long day I'm going to right up the Bruges part in another post :)

Edinburgh, Scotland, Sun 30 - Mon 31 Aug 09

Big sleep-in in the morning, still feeling like crap. Definitely had a full blown cold... damn! But I was determined to climb Arthur's Seat, I wasn't going to let a cold stop me from climbing one of the few hills I have come across in the last few months. So after a good sleep and a big breakfast we headed for the mountain at about midday. When I say mountain it really is just a big hill. According to Wikipedia it's about 20 meters higher than the Mount. So yeah not too tough of a climb but enough to get the heart pumping.

Arthur's seat is actually in the middle of the city too so it only took us about 15mins to walk to Holyrood Park at the base of it from our hostel. It doesn't have much vegetation like the Mount and it's front is dominated by the Salisbury Crags, a row of steep rock cliffs about half the height again of Arthur's Seat with tracks running along both the top and below the rock cliff.

It was mainly steps all the way to the top and then the odd bit of rock climbing before reaching the summit. The views were beautiful looking across Edinburgh. Sadly we couldn't stay up there very long as the wind was freezing. We made our way down another path where we found some blackberry bushes, yum! We had a lot of fun sourcing juicy blackberries and Nick even did the hard part of climbing up the bank amongst all the prickles to get the best ones.

We then walked the trail along the front of the Salisbury Crags which was a nice stroll to finish off our climb. I had a lot of fun, definitely miss my hiking.

We walked back up past Holyrood Palace which is the Queen's residence in Scotland (decided not to pay to go in) and wondered back up The Royal Mile, stopping for a late lunch along the way.

We decided we should see at least one festival show while we were here so we found ourselves a free comedy stand up at a local pub as part of the Fringe. I have to admit, it's harder than it seems to find a show to go to. There is almost too much choice, and it's difficult to wade through all of the listings just looking for one good show to go to. The standup was ok, not high quality but good enough for a bit of fun. The pub was really cool though with 4 stories down underground and lots of hidden rooms and dark spaces.

Monday was a pretty laxed day as I was feeling the worst I had over the whole weekend. We found a pub to chill in for a few hours and keep out of the cold. I didn't have the energy to do anymore sightseeing so we ended up taking an earlier train home so I could get back to my own bed. Unfortunately the train was delayed and packed!

By some miracle we both got seats even though the whole train was reserved, we managed to pick one of the few seats where the people didn't show up. Luck was on my side that day. I couldn't have handled a 5 hour journey standing up with a headache.

Besides getting sick I had a lot of fun in Edinburgh. It's a beautiful city with gorgeous buildings and a nice atmosphere. It's just a pity about the weather :)

Edinburgh, Scotland, Fri 28 - Sat 29 Aug 09

I'm a bit behind my blog! Whoops :) Oh well better try and catch up. We took the train up for the long weekend to Edinburgh. I decided we'd go by train because even though it's a bit longer I thought it would be less hassle, haha yeah right. The train network in the UK needs a serious overhaul. No seat allocation even though we paid a silly amount for the tickets, delayed and overcrowded trains. I think the UK could take some advice from the French, their train system was awesome.

So anyway, August is the Edinburgh Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. A month long event of theatre shows, plays, dance performances, comedy shows etc. They also have the Military Tatoo on and lots of street performers and the like. We spent Friday night wondering around this madness, checking out the main street (The Royal Mile) watching the street performances and dodging the pamphlet pushers (there were a lot of them!). We had dinner in a nice japanese restaurant and did our best to stay warm in the freezing Scotland weather. Seriously, considering it was the height of summer, I could not believe how cold it was! I ended up getting sick thanks to the freezing wind. Only in the UK can you get a cold during summer! :)

We went and saw Edinburgh Castle on the Saturday. We had to queue for ages to get in so we ended up spending most of the day there. Edinburgh Castle is up on a hill at the top of the Royal Mile and the wind picks up off the Forth of Firth and blows a freezing gale across the castle grounds. The castle was fun, lots to see. We timed it really well and caught a free tour from the castle gates. It was great to hear some of the stories about the place.

At 1pm they fire a big canon from the castle grounds which was a lot of fun to watch. It gave me a huge fright when it went off even though I was expecting it! We had a look through the old Prison rooms which have been re-created so you can see what it would have been like to be a Prisoner of War there. We also saw the Crown Jewels (not as impressive as the British ones at Windsor). There was the Palace Quarters where Queen Mary of Scots was born and another room had a large memorial to the thousands of soldiers killed in WW1 and other battles. And of course we spent a bit of time just admiring the view across all of Edinburgh.

In the late afternoon we went on a mission to find a building we had seen from the castle. It was very old and black with age, in fact it was more of a monument really. We found it next to the gardens near the train station and tried to chill there in the sun but it was too damn cold in the wind so we kept moving.

We walked along Princes St, the main shopping area and kept going till we reached Carlton Hill. On the way we found an old graveyard full of beautiful tombs and monuments from the 18th century. Once we got to Carlton Hill we walked up to the summit to enjoy the view over to Arthur's seat (Edinburgh's mini mountain) and the Old Town of Edinburgh, including the view back over the castle. Man how I had missed hills! London is way too flat. I love the challenge hills bring to walks and the views always make it worthwhile.

Carlton Hill had a nice collection of monuments on top too. One was this collection of huge pillars that Nick managed to climb up on (I was too short and couldn't make it up). We chilled up on the hill for ages and found a nice spot near the edge to enjoy the views.

We'd had a pretty full on day so we headed back to the hostel. Unfortunately within half an hour of being back and relaxing at the hostel I started feeling terrible. My throat was dry & sore, I had a hazy headache and my body was aching. I knew for sure I had caught a cold. I couldn't believe how fast in happened. Damn this weather! I had absolutely no energy to leave the hostel so gave up on the idea of a night out whiskey tasting and instead got Vietnamese takeout (they had Pho, which is the tastiest dish ever and perfect for killing all sorts of nasty bugs - lots of garlic and chilli!).