York

We got up EARLY to take the train to York to visit my friend Karen.  We had a nice time sightseeing, eating, drinking, and wandering around York.  Then it was back to London for a late dinner at the hotel.

Bye Bye Brussels, Hello London

I had purposely booked us on a late afternoon train to London thinking there would be lots of stuff we wanted to see in Brussesl on Tuesday, but things did not take as long as we thought so we had quite a bit of time until our train left.  The hubs decided we should just head to the train station early.  I wasn't thrilled about sitting around a train station for a couple of hours, but marriage is about compromise.  So we took an Uber to the train station--much cheaper and our driver only talked on his phone while driving, no texting and his driving wasn't too crazy.  Additionally, the concierge told us the taxi driver had overcharged us.  I think our Uber was like 7 Euros (instead of the 20 Euro taxi ride).  Anyway, we got to the train station and they told us we were way too early, but due to some train service being disrupted by strikes in France, they would move us to an earlier train without charging us any fees so we got to leave within an hour instead of sitting around for a couple hours. About two hours later, we were in London.  We took the tube to our hotel, got checked in, hung out for a bit, then set off exploring.  I've been to London a few times, but the hubs never has so I figured he should see some of the big spots including Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square.  After wandering around for a bit, we headed back toward our hotel.  We grabbed dinner at a pace down the street from our hotel--fish and chips for me--then back to our room for the evening.  We had an early start the next day as we were heading to York to visit my friend Karen. 

Ghent and Bruges

While researching Belgium, I had read that there were various cities outside of Brussels that were worth visiting that did not take a long time to reach. We didn't have time to see all of them, but a day trip to Ghent and Bruges was definitely doable so that's how we spent Monday.  Rather than bore you with all the details, I'll summarize then just encourage you to scroll through the pictures.  We rode to Ghent, had a tour of the town, visitied a church, and then had a tiny bit of free time.  Then it was on to Bruges for a brief tour, lunch--lunch was good, I finally had some Belgian mussels, but it was seriously overpriced--then continued our tour of Bruges.  After that, we had some free time, then we did a lovely half hour boat ride tour through the canals.  Then it was back to the bus to head back to Brussels.

My pics won't load right now, but will try to post in a later blog.

Brussels, Waffles, Beer, and Chocolate

Although we were still a bit tired, we really enjoyed our first full day in Belgium.  We got up, got ready, and then headed about 5 minutes away from our hotel to take a morning tour of the city.  The tour was nice, we saw the big sights to see (see pics below), but it was in four languages.  I speak English and a little bit of Spanish (I am NOT fluent) so I am amazed anytime someone knows multiple languages.  The only thing with a tour in four languages is after they do a bit in your language, you have to wait a while for them to get through three other languages before they say anything else in your language.  So the tour ran a little longer than it was supposed to, but we didn't have plans until 3:00 so it wasn't a big deal.  There was a bit of walking and then the tour continued on a bus.  After the tour, we went back to the hotel to drop of my jacket--it was warm, use the facilities, and then we had lunch at a sandwich place.  More exciting than the lunch was the dessert.  I finally got a Belgian waffle in Belgium with some delicious strawberry ice-cream.  Their ice-cream is different from our ice-cream, but it's GOOD.  We wandered around a bit, then headed to a chocolate store where we were supposed to begin our beer and chocolate tour.   I like chocolate and the hubs likes beer (to be fair, he does like chocolate too) so this seemed like a good tour to book.  It may have been our favorite part of Brussels.  There were about 10 people in our group.  The tour begins with a few pieces of chocolate (we enjoyed it so much that we went back two days later and bought some) and then you stroll through various neighborhoods of Brussels learning some history and seeing some historical/famous spots as you head to three more chocolate spots. I tried a variety of chocolate.  One that was quite interesting was the basil chocolate, it reminded me of pizza.  It was like eating chocolate and pizza all in one.  I wasn't a big fan of the spicy chocolate.  There were also various fruity type chocolates (i.e. raspberry) and more traditional type flavors too.  After visiting the four chocolate spots, and trying likeva dozen pieces of chocolate, it's on to three bars, where you have two beers at each bar.  I liked one of the beers (yes, only one, but that was no surprise as I don't like beer much anyway).  The second to last bar included snacks and the last bar included one last piece of chocolate. By the time the tour was over, we were full and happy.  However, we stopped for french fries on the way back to the hotel because um, they looked delicious and I wasn't going to Belgium and not having fries. I couldn't finish them--huge portion, but I enjoyed them anyway.