Hoi from Belgium

We had a lovely couple of weeks at home catching up with everyone and have now started on this North European Tour….

We left home on Wednesday morning and despite a slightly stressful journey, as we witnessed a horrible crash on the motorway and had to call the police, we arrived ok at the Eurotunnel and I got to experience the drive on train journey for the first time - I really enjoyed it - very easy 35 minute crossing. We drove straight to Bruges and stayed at a wonderful campsite, Camping Meling which was a 30 minute walk from the centre. We walked in on Thursday which was a scorching day all round and hit the high 30's here all day. We both loved Bruges although it was far too hot to sample or buy any chocolate! We had a great trip on the canals, climbed the Belfry in homage to the excellent film 'In Bruges' and sampled some very tasty Belgian beer at the Brewery.

Thanks to being an hour later, it doesn't get dark until about 11pm, and it was still above 30 degrees even then, but we had packed a large fan and that helped in the tent when we were finally able to go to sleep.

Yesterday we took it easy and had a look around locally and then chilled out at the tent and last night we had a thunderstorm, so we packed down this morning and drove on to Brussels in the rain. We had thought we would stop at a 'pop-up' campsite in the centre but when we arrived, and drove around the back of a church, past all the graffiti, to a ramshackle site full of backpacker tents and plastic chairs, where we couldn't park the car, we decided to give it a miss! We are now 10kms outside of Brussels which is near enough, but on a proper site which is a lovely field full of trees - it looked very green today but that's because it hasn't stopped raining - we had a brief respite where we got the tent up but it's due to continue until tomorrow. We don't mind after the intense heat recently - it's the first time we've put socks on for a while!

Yesterday we went into Brussels and did Mini-Europe which is a funny little model world, with each of the European countries represented, you can see on the pictures we had 'great fun' with the full size statues and if you look at the model of Westminster it has all the Brexit protesters in the foreground with tiny placards!!

Right next door is the amazing Atomium building, although it looks very modern in style it was actually built in 1958. There isn't actually very much inside, but there was an amazing and modern LED light show which we loved, and on the top sphere there is a restaurant. We then went to the Planetarium, where the soft voice of Benedict Cumberbatch narrating all about the sun sent us both into a lovely nap!!! Whoops, woke up at the end :)

We came back to find the lovely camping field overtaken by a car rally, which was interesting and amusing at first and then hugely irritating when they woke the whole campsite at 6am with blasting music and a cacophony of air horns before they finally left the site at 7.30am

Today we have had full sunshine and made the most of the Brussels hop on / off bus tour all around the city, we saw the Grand Palace, very impressive with plenty of gold gilt shining in the sun, the famous Mannequin Pis statue (a very small naked boy having a wee, no photo needed), the huge European Commission building and the European Parliament. We also went to the Rene Magritte art museum, his work is very off the wall but we are now big fans - a new favourite artist, albeit well out of our price range so I made do with my favourite picture in postcard form.

Then it was time to sample a Belgian waffle, we had them with banana and cream (banana to offset the guilt factor) and we both felt very sick afterwards so it's salad for dinner.

We are moving on tomorrow, so will blog again in a few days, in the meantime I have uploaded a few photos so you can all get your heads twisting again (sorry!)

Xxx