Europe, Post 1: Crawley to Folkestone to Bruges

Bonjour from Belgium! It's 2:15pm on Saturday afternoon and, after spending the night and morning in Bruges, we are en route to Brussels (typing this in the car; will post when I next have net access). Here's what we've been up to so far...

Yesterday afternoon we left Crawley at 4pm, going via Horsham to visit Trev and Sharon and post our assignments. Then we drove to Folkestone, where the Eurotunnel starts. Traffic was good most of the way despite yesterday being one of the busiest days of the year for English roads – heard the figure estimated at 18 million cars full of people travelling home for Christmas etc!!!

Once we reached the Channel Tunnel at 6:20pm, an hour early, we queued up for the self check-in, parked the car and walked into the “Eurotunnel Shopping” building, queued up for over 50 minutes at Burger King (there were two lines of probably 60 people each!!), dashed back to our car in answer to our boarding call, and queued up about four more times before finally driving onto the train. :)



We were parked end to end with other cars, and above us was another layer of the same. Very strange thought to know you are sitting in your car under the ocean floor!! After we popped up in France about 30 minutes later, the fact that it only took about 5 minutes to disembark and get onto a highway seems to point to the validity of the statement that English people simply queue for the fun of it!!

Anyway, after driving for about an hour through France and into Belgium (right-side drive in Europe, by the way – it takes some getting used to so I'm glad only Ben has driven so far!), we arrived at our hostel in Bruges a little after 11:30pm. The weather was very cold but there was no snow or ice on the roads.

We stayed at a nice little place called Art Hostel, which was on a street corner across from a river, a little way out of the city centre. We ended up having our 4-bed dorm all to ourselves, which was good as it was extremely tiny!

This morning, we savoured the feeling of waking up without an alarm clock at about 9am! Then we got ourselves ready, checked out, and had a look through a couple of shops next door. Bought a few little bits and pieces!

After that, we headed into the city centre. Bruges is a very likeable city, with interesting old buildings, cobblestone streets, accommodating people, and lots and lots of delicious-looking food! Many of the tall, narrow buildings have a stepped, A-shaped facade along the line of the roof. Difficult to describe, but refer to the photos!



We found some local markets with a fresh fruit and vegetable section, flower stalls selling Christmas candle wreaths and fresh mistletoe, and lots of clothing stalls! Ben got some socks and a hat, and I got a jumper, some patterned stockings and another hat. :) There was a large fountain with metal sculptures around it near the markets, and the water was completely frozen over! There seemed to be a few gloves frozen into the ice for some strange reason...





For breakfast/brunch, we bought a couple of sweet buns from a bakery, and later on we had some savoury thingies for lunch (my descriptive ability is a bit lacking, sorry!). Also had a yummy slice from another bakery, which had so many delightful treats on offer that it was almost physically painful to choose just one.





After that, we decided to leave for Brussels earlier than originally planned, to give us some free time before we head in to the Christmas markets tonight. We're staying at a B&B for the next two nights, so it will be nice to settle in a bit!

Well, that's all for now; we're coming into Brussels. Oooh, it's been SNOWING here!! Au revoir!