Well, we’re on holiday. Leaving was a bit of a disaster to be honest – when I left the office part of the M4 was closed. I had to work my way home through small lanes and didn’t get back to the house until 1900 – we’d hoped to be on the road by then. A few problems with the alarm were fairly quickly sorted and before 2000 the car was packed and we were off. So far, I don’t think we’ve forgotten anything critical…
We stopped off with a friend in London for the night before getting up for an early start and heading down to Folkestone for our 0950 departure on the Eurotunnel. 35 minutes of train and we were in France – it’s pretty impressive on the convenience front, even if it’s boring: you sit in your car for 35 minutes of tunnel. Still, we were in Calais.
We quickly headed onto the motorway and headed across northern France over to Belgium. Nothing particularly exciting about the drive – it was over land that was quite flat, lots of agriculture. I was munching on a piece of M&S cocktail sausage when it went down the wrong way and spent the next 10 minutes coughing, so we pulled into a service station for a break. No sooner had we stopped than a wasp flew into the car – Sean whacked it with a cloth and flung it straight at me, where it stung me on the neck.
Once I’d finished swearing and Sean had finished apologising, we got ourselves sorted. Apparently, you have to pay 30c to go to the loo in service stations around here. That was a bit of a pain since we hadn’t stopped at a cashpoint yet…
Anyway, we got to Brussels with no idea where we were going and asked TomTom to take us to a car park in the center of town. A nearby Novotel pointed us to the tourist information center in the Grande Place….whereupon we walked into the middle of a huge beer festival. Of course, we were driving, so couldn’t take part much to my disappointment. After pottering around for a bit, we had a Belgian Waffle (what else would you eat in Belgium?) and wandered around taking photos before heading back to the car. We drove around a few of the sights before heading back out on the motorway. I’d love to come back here, it’s a beautiful city with lots to see.
The drive to Luxembourg was more scenic, crossing valleys although by the time we got there we were both exhausted – we’d not had much sleep the night before. So after a bit of food, we headed straight to bed.
Miles so far: 513