Brugge

Well the driving part of the holiday is over but after we loaded George we still had about a week up our sleeve before we returned home.

After speaking to some of the Belgiums in the caravan park we decided to spend part of that time in Brugge. We caught the train from Antwerp and when we arrived at the train station chose a hotel from the book provided by the Information Centre. It is a lovely old hotel right in the centre of town and close to the train and bus station. The staff are really friendly and it appears to be a family run business. Best of all we have our own shower that we do not have to keep pressing every 10 seconds to keep running and the water is as hot as we want to make it. We also have a toilet we can sit on (with the luxury of a toilet seat) with toilet paper provided - now that is style compared with what we have been used to for the last 8 weeks. Jim has also reacquainted himself with the remote control and we have been watching about 10 channels at one time!!

Brugge is full of beautiful old buildings dating way back to before the 15th century. There are canals going through part of the city so we took an enjoyable boat trip along the canals. Brugge is famous for its lace making and tapestries and there are lots of shops displaying these beautiful items. I had an afternoon shopping by myself so wandered around these for hours doing lots of looking and admiring.

Today we caught a train to Blankenberg which is a coastal town on the North Sea. There were lots of tall buildings, small beach huts in penned off areas and light brown water. We then caught the tram to a town further along the coast called De Haan which we enjoyed more due to the interesting buildings in the town. There were lots of people sunning themselves on the benches and a couple of groups of schoolchildren playing on the beach. It was not what we considered warm enough for swimming but there were a couple of people brave enough to go for a dip.