Saturday 16 April

7-19C London and Brussels

Sunny

Woke up in the UK, caught the ferry at Dover, landed in France and went to sleep in Belgium.3 countries in one day, no wonder l feel tired.We met a few other people on the tour during the bus ride to the ferry in the UK and were greeted in Calais, France by the tour director.We came ashore on the north side of the France where the area is quite flat, we're travelling south and the landscape changes to a hillier terrain. On the drive to Brussels we passed a sign that indicated the Brugge turnoff and l thought, l've been there, it's a beautiful, beautiful town. Not long after we arrived at our hotel in Brussels, we were met by my cousin, Henrike, who took us out to dinner.Henrike lives in Amsterdam which is only about 90 minutes drive from Brussels.She took us to a local Belgium restaurant called T Kelderke which is in the main square.When we walked into the square it was just breathtaking.The buildings around the square were beautiful and very ornate.There are chocolate shops everywhere you look, hey, it's Belgium, and the chocolates all look so delicious.We bought a local sweet called cuboner which is a cone shaped sweetand comes in lots of different flavors.I got violet and mum got apple flavor.It was really nice and is a bit like a fruit jelly. Dinner was quite nice….we had cheese croquettes for starters then l had a steak, mum had beef and onion stew and Henrike had rabbit (eeuw!!).After dinner we walked to a statue called Manneken - Pis, a legendary Brussels figure.The statue, made of bronze, was commissioned in 1619.Today there are chocolates, corkscrews, bottle openers, magnets, etc depicting the statue.There was even one chocolate statue with chocolate piss coming out.But enough about a pissing statue…..we saw beautiful churches, lovely old buildings and new ones too.There was a humungous statue sort of thing, made up of huge silver balls and was all lit up.There are restaurants and shops inside the balls so it would have been interesting to take a look inside.I took a photo but it really doesn't do it justice.Henrike dropped us back at the hotel around 10.15pm.It was really good to see her again as, being overseas, we missed her on her regular trip to Oz.It got quite warm and sunny during the afternoon.