Easter in Brussels/Bruge

Friday 30th March 2018

We seem to be in a habit of booking rather early trains/plane tickets to adventurous locations and whilst at the time it seems like a wonderful idea (much better for me being an early bird anyways) but when that alarm clock goes off at 4.30am it most certainly was not a good idea. In addition we went to a show last night in Covent Garden called '42nd Street' - I definitely recommend this if you enjoy tap dancing. I can't complain really since this long Easter weekend we would be heading to Belgium where we would spend two days exploring Brussels and two days exploring Bruge. We would be taking the Eurostar this time around and it was certainly pleasant not taking a visit to one of the local airports. The process is a lot smoother when you can hop on the underground and take the Victoria line all the way to Kings Cross St Pancras station. After clearing security they keep you in a holding pen and you watch the screens intently for your platform number to appear 20 minutes before the train is supposed to depart. Everyone rushes for the train for no particular reason considering we all have allocated seats and not many people have large bags anyways. This train was a lot older than the ones that run through to Paris so we weren't quite as impressed. Lew slept most of the way anyways but my plan was to get some research done. However, we did both have a snooze going though the channel tunnel since it was so lovely and dark only to emerge into the bright sunshine of the French country side and had to change our clocks forwards another hour. Arriving into Brussels the airport had a good system where you were able to store your large bag for €5.50 ($9.30 nzd) for 24 hours. The locker was ok'ed by Lew since it had a double lock system and we decided to take the risk and leave both our laptops behind. It was going to be a short 25 minute walk in the town which we didn't mind at all since we could actually see the sun! We Facetimed Lews parents on the way in and caught up with some of the details of what they had done in Brussels themselves and what they had planned for their upcoming trip to London in a few months. We said goodbye once we had reached the town square (Grand Place) and given them a live view of what we were currently seeing. The strange thing is all the police officers in this square were old women with guns on their hips. Slightly different to some of the other countries we have visited when you have large men with semi-automatics strapped to them them! All sides of the square were covered with multiple buildings with intricate gold detailing on their fronts or a gothic like appearance which would describe the town hall and the Kings house (or Broodhuis). The sun was sparking off the gold accents, tourist were taking photographs from all angles and pigeons were hopping around the ground below. At this moment we decided that we would sign ourselves up for a free walking tour with Sandeman's for 1.30pm since we were both a little exhausted already and being lead like a herd of sheep from one point of interest to the next sounded like a good plan. This gave us enough time for lunch and a quick google search and an 8 minute walk lead to a place called De Noordzee: La Mer du Nord famous for it's good fish. We were pretty sure that Brussels wasn't exactly close to the sea but we turned a blind eye to this when we saw the oodles of fresh fish in the window and the amount of happy locals crowding around beer in hand and fresh fish on their plates. The bonus being that it also had a toilet so the decision had been made for us - YES. The man at the counter could see we were confused about the menu so he took us to the window with all the raw fish in it and pointed out what the options were. We went with two fried white fish dishes and some deep fried ?hack fish which all came with a side of salad, tartare sauce, lemon and some bread costing us €22 ($37.20) which isn't the cheapest lunch we have had but was certainly worth it. The meal was fast to be brought out and I can tell you hands down that I haven't had that sort of quality fish since we left NZ and with it being topped with fresh herbs, lemon and tartare sauce it was delicious. We didn't even miss the side of fried to go with it and Lew surprisingly didn't mind just eating a big hunk of fish. Once we had finished up and I had made the most of the bathroom brushing my teeth to get rid of the strong fish and garlic taste we wandering the long way back to the Grand Place which was where our walking tour would start from at 1.30pm but got distracted by a very cool shop called Dillie & Kamille. It was that typical nordic design that is so in right now and we wanted to bring so much of it home with us! Well there isn't a weight limit on Eurostar right?! We promised we would be back to make a decision as to whether we really did need those enamel dishes we had always wanted knowing very well we would have to be sending this back to NZ! Onwards to the walking tour. We had a really large group for the 1.30pm english group and I was pleased we had reserved a couple of tickets since it is popular as it's free. A couple more guides showed up and thankfully they split us into four groups. Our guide was called Adelin, a local man from Brussels with a hearty sense of humour and pants almost down to his ankles. Not to worry we would tip him at the end so hopefully he has enough money to buy a belt as he reminded us all that as guides they are not paid but only rely on the tips they get from participants. Once we had all got into the groups we started the tour by first addressing the beautiful buildings surrounding us in the Grand Place and the Grand Place itself. So Brussels was officially founded in 979ad and was the center of trade between Bruges, Ghent and Cologne. The Grand Place was mostly a swamp and initially held many markets hence it's Dutch name Grote Markt. Infact the people of Brussels speak quite a few languages - Dutch/Flemish (57%), French (42%) and German (%1) with all the street signs and documents being in French and Dutch. The interesting thing is that if you notice the names of the streets surrounding the Grand Place they are named after food such as butter (Rue au Beurre), herbs (Rue du Marché aux Herbes), cheese (Rue du Marché aux Fromages) for example. The buildings around the square were guildhouses from the different merchants as well as the town hall itself and the Kings house known as broodhuis (breadhouse) in Dutch and Maison du Roi in French. Our guide asked us to find what was wrong with the city hall and none of us could pick it. He mentioned that it is asymmetrical with different numbers of windows and statues on each side - neither of us had even noticed but now it was glaringly obvious! He told us the story associated with this mistake and that is that the architect never saw the place until after it was built. He was so appalled at the eye-saw he had created that he jumped of the top of the building committing suicide. Adelin confirmed that this is completely untrue as there are buildings younger than the city hall that was built by the same man but the old wives tale continues to circulate today. Then there is the Broodhuis which has a neo-gothic style and the two names indicate what the building was used for. Broodhuis in Dutch linking it's first use as a bread market in the 13th century and the Maison du Roi referring to the title of the man who owned the building Duke of Brabant and later Charles V, King of Spain in the 16th century. The only guildhouse that is being used for its original purpose today is the beer house which is now a beer museum. Right next to it is the House of the Swan which used to be a combination of a restaurant/hotel. It is famous for the amount of writers that have stayed here and produced well known pieces such as Victor Hugo the author of Les Miserable and also Karl Marx who invented communism and wrote 'The Communist Manifesto'. Mostly all of the buildings in this square have had to be rebuilt after the bombardment of Brussels by France in 1695 in which the town hall was the main target but was remained untouched. Clearly some more target practice would have been useful. After this we left the busy Grand Place and continued to walk down a busy side street where there was a mural of of Tin Tin and Snowy painted on the side of the building. Brussels is also known for it's highest population of comic book writers and Adelin enlightened us on a childhood favourite called the Smurfs in which he told us was an example of what a country under a communist ruler would be like - completely true and something I hadn't even realised!. Further down the street there was a big crowd of people around a statue called Manniken Pis which is basically a small naked boy taking a pee. The origins of this statue is unknown and there is a book full of tales of how this bronze statue came about. Adelin told us one story about how this area was close to the leather merchants which used ammonia in urine to soften their leather and so children were encouraged to urinate into a container for these merchants. The statue was a lot funnier than we realised and the day we visited he was wearing the traditional outfit of the students. Turns out he actually has around 980 outfits - one for every occasion and they are all on display at the Broodhuis museum. As we were walking away with our guide to the next stop the statue begun peeing even further than before so that he was peeing all over the crowd, then a short while later he begun to urinate beer and people surrounding him were filling up beer jugs beneath him! Quite funny after all!

Adelin took us to another mural where he explained the three types of beer we all need to try whilst we are in the city. The first is Lambic which is considered a traditional sour beer that Adelin says smells like vomit but tastes very nice. It is produced using the most natural way to ferment beer by having a large pool of beer and allowing the natural yeasts to spontaneously ferment the beer. Since it is not in a cast the CO2 produced by the fermentation is released into the air making it also a very flat beer. The next is Kriek beer which is another traditional beer that is a cherry based beer and is recommended for those who don't like the sour beer. Then there is the Trappist Beer of which there is only 12 places in the world that brew this - 6 of them being in Belgium. To be called a trappist beer three things need to be adhered/respected - 1) the beer must be brewed by monks in a monastery 2) the beer must be of a very high quality and high alcohol (7-11%) and 3) you must not be able to make money out of the beer and the money must either go to the Vatican or to charity. Adelin said that this is the only country in the world you can be an alcohol and a good guy at the same time since the more of it you drink the more money goes to charity! Adelin then went on to discuss the history of frites and confirm to us that the term French fries is completely wrong and that Belgium were the ones to invent these. Back in the day fishermen used to use the small fish they couldn't sell and cook them in hot oil. During the winter months they weren't able to find so many fish and begun doing the same thing with potatoes - cook them in cold oil for a long time and then cook them in hot oil for a short time to get them crunchy outside. The Americans visited Belgium during the war and didn't realise Belgium was a seperate country and therefore names them French fries. There are many many shops selling frites around Brussels and they also famously have many many different sauces you can have on them instead of the usual tomato sauce and mayo so make sure you branch out! We then walked via the opera house which used to be the mint where money was produced. We begun walking up a slight hill where we came across a cathedral surrounded by bluebells and had a statue of King Boudewijn (the first King of Belgium post WW2) who was considered the most beloved King of Belgium. There is a rule in Belgium that every law that is passed must be signed by the monarch. Belgium was passing a law to make abortion legal and Boudewijn did not agree with this himself but was happy for this law to pass for his people. Adelin kept telling us that in Belgium nothing is a problem and they are people that always find solutions. The governments solution to pass this law was to make the King impotent for two days whilst it was passed so he did not have to endorse it himself. We continued to tour through the Royal Park which is where the government and the Royal Palace is located and finished with a stop overlooking the city. Once the tour had ended we swiftly made our way back into town as Lew was very keen on some frites ever since we walked past a shop Adelin recommended to us - Frites Tabora. With a large scoop of chips and some sweet andalouse sauce we begun to make our way back to the train station where we would pick up our bags and head to Bruge. One of the trains was late and we managed to get up onto the platform before it arrived. We had heard that you could just use your Eurostar tickets to continue to any station in Belgium if it's within 24 hours which is why we decided to head through to Bruge after a day in Brussels. The part that I clearly missed was that you needed to book a ticket that states "to any Belgium station" and indeed once we had got on the train this became apparent that I hadn't booked the correct tickets (although I knew nothing about needing to book this specific ticket over the other just to Brussels). There was a bit of a mad rush to find seat and shortly after a women came around checking tickets, crap. I was rather nervous at this point knowing that we should have brought seperate tickets to be on this train but for some reason the women only seemed to care that we were in first class and not cattle class and didn't even realise we had the wrong tickets. Thank goodness! We removed ourselves from this carriage and were potentially going to have to sit in the corridor for an hour as there weren't many seats available. I decided to walk up and down the carriages refusing to sit on the floor and finally found us a couple of seats and went back to get Lew to drag the luggage with him to the seats.

We arrived into Bruge just before darkness and made our way in the rain to the Airbnb. It was pretty easy to find and was just on the outskirts of town with a short walk in to the main city center. We were both feeling a little worse for wear after a late night, early morning and a busy day exploring the city and I was really keen on cooking something simple at home. Unfortunately the supermarket closed in 10 minutes and we decided we would just have to go out tonight and cook the rest of the nights. Finding a couple of places on someone blog online we went to the first location in town called Restaurant Couvert only to find it closed and we would have to traipse across town to the second option called 't Gezelleke. The town itself was so beautiful despite the drizzly weather and the cute coloured Belgium buildings with their step like roof appearances were something I hadn't seen before. We were excited about exploring the city tomorrow in some sunshine hopefully. The small restaurant we went to was reasonably busy considering it was 9.30pm at night but there was a table for two spare. The menu was up around the walls and it took a bit of google translating to decided we order the Flemish stew with a glass of sav for me and a beer for Lew of course. The stew came with a side of fries which we thought would be a funny combination anywhere else but we could already see how much the Belgium people love their fries. The stew was made of beef and had clearly been cooked with a local beer making it taste so rich- perfect for the cold night it was. The alcohol certainly made us relax and once again I struggled to finish my one glass of wine. There was at least half an hour where I struggled with overheating and uncontrollable giggles. The meal certainly wasn't the cheapest at €53.7 (£47.23/$91.40 nzd) but it is always nice to convert it back to pounds and it's a slightly lower figure. We walked the 2km back to our Airbnb through the cobblestone streets in the rain and called it a night.

Saturday 31st March

Both of us weren't in any rush to get up this morning especially since we had no food in the house for breakfast. By 11am we decided to head to the local Carrefour supermarket down the road to get some supplies to last the next couple of mornings. On our way home we discovered the large Saturday morning market Beursplein produce market in Zand square. It was certainly one of the more impressive markets we have seen since a lot of the produce sellers had large rigs full of items that were able to fold out making it vert quick to unpack and pack stuff away. We decided this would probably be a great place to get some food for dinner and we walked around deciding what produce to buy. I left the meat for Lew to be in charge of and we walked around the multiple rigs with so much meat it was difficult to decide. We went with some sausages 6 for €3.90 (£3.43/ $6.60 nzd) and some huge chicken skewers for €11 (£9.7-/$18.70 nzd). We would match this with some salad and potatoes one night and salad and eggplant the next night! There were many trucks also selling pork hock and rotisserie chicken and since it was around 1pm I suggested we get some hot meat to pair with the bread and salad we had also purchased. Dinner and lunches sorted! We headed back to the house to make some brunch which involved hot ham with bread rolls and salad. Trying to make the most of the sun we headed out asap to stroll around the city. We started the afternoon off going to the famous brewery called De Halve Maan to book a tour for tomorrow since it only had space for one more person online and obviously there is two of us. Then we just admired the city by walking up and down the cobblestone lanes and winding around the canals. A short walk away from the brewery we came upon a picturesque place that is the home of the Beguines which is today inhabited by the nuns of the Order of St Benedict. It had the most beautiful open garden with daffodils sprouting up all over the place in the middle of all the white houses. It was a slight shame that the number of tourists around taking selfies ruined the tranquility of the place. Moving on we brought some handmade lollies from one of the local sweet shops, a metal plant stand for our room back in London (thank goodness we are on the train!) since I had been looking for one for the last couple of months with no luck. Lew brought a jersey and a T-shirt from Scotch & Soda (after I forced him to go back and try them on!) and probably our most favourite find of the day was a shop full of all the jams you can imagine! There is about 150 different flavours and we were able to sample a lot of them until we were able to decide on a raspberry jam and also a blood orange marmalade. Two large pots for only €8 (£7/$13.60). I highly recommend visiting the shop yourself which is called Jam Jam and leave some room in your luggage for these amazing creations. Heading back for the day our backpacks were rather full with all the goodies we had brought. Lew planned a run for us right around the outside of Bruge basically following the canal for 9km. With daylight savings now in full effect it was such a bonus to be out running around 7.30pm and it's still light. There are wonderful pathways around the outside of the township with many ramparts and city gates which used to protect the city. There was also four ancient windmills which is all that is left of the 25-30 originals that populated the town wall. Two of them the Sint-Janshuis Mill and the Koelewei Mill still grind grain to this day. Cutting back through the city we saw a lot of tourists making their way home for the evening clearly only day trippers to the city. No wonder it seemed so deserted late Friday night when we were out trying to find food! We finished up the day with salad, baked potatoes and sausages followed by an episode of Black Mirror and a phone call back to the Commons family in NZ.

Sunday 1st April

Happy Easter Everyone! I had a rough night with fevers, headaches, body aches and nausea in which I self diagnosed myself with gastroenteritis - unfortunately something I had also experienced over New Years so the symptoms were familiar! With minimal sleep I ended up on the couch watching TV and snoozing until Lew woke up at 11am. I was very unmotivated to leave the vicinity of the house so there wasn't much point in waking him sooner. Lew made a massive breakfast with our lovely jam and bread from yesterdays market which I picked at and we facetimed our friend Samuel since him and his GF Eden are about to leave for their O/E this Friday and end up joining us in London mid June! Im sure you will meet them in the blogs later on in the year. We are so excited to have some more friends joining us and can't wait until we can all start exploring Europe with them! We had booked in the brewery tour at 2.15pm so had to say our goodbyes and walk ourselves there..or rather drag myself along. It was very busy and thankfully we had booked this yesterday as I don't think we would have got a spot if we just turned up. We paid the €19 ($32 nzd) each and got given a couple of tickets indicating which tour we were on. We hung around waiting for the tour to start and thankfully I found a chair as my heart begun absolutely racing for no particular reason. The nurse in me really wanted to know whether I had flicked into some strange rhythm like SVT as I swear it was going at least 180bpm. By the time 5 minutes had passed it all of a sudden slowed down which is when Lew remembered he had his watch on that could record your heart rate so he strapped this onto my wrist. Sure enough even though it had slowed down it was still sitting at 130bpm and Lew made me keep it on the entire brewery tour. I put it down to dehydration but wasn't so keen on drinking beer to fix this! Anyways back to the beer which is why we came here in the first place. De Halve Maan Brewery is very famous in Bruge and it's history goes back till the mid 16th Century. However, the current owners the Maes family purchased the brewery in 1856 and Henri I modernised it to current standards. The brewery continued to be passed down through-out the family to Henri III after WWI who converted the brewery into the popular style of larger and also soft drink and tried a home delivery system. This failed as many people found it easier to drive to the supermarket to get their beer/soft drink and the brewery were unable to brew enough to suppy the supermarkets directly. During the 70's and early 80's the 5th generation Veronique took over the brewery and developed a higher alcohol blonde ale called "Straffe Hendrik (strong Henri) Triple" and also opened the brewerys doors to the public. The current owner Xaxier Vanneste who is the son of Veronique refurbished the entire place and also relaunched it with a new and now very popular beer called "Brugse Zot". On the tour we were first taken into a room with four large cylinders in which the first process of producing the beer is commenced and it takes a total of 6 hours for them to produce the first step. Surprisingly they are able to produce 5 million litres per day! Our guide told us that you only need four ingredients to make the beer which is water, malt, yeast and hop. She then lead us up a couple of flights of stairs where we could see the big tanks where they heat up the malt - the hotter it is heated the darker the beer. Also the more malt you add in the higher the alcohol content of the beer. Our guide told us that majority of the malt used comes from France but recently with some local contracts they have managed to source 15% of their malt locally from around Bruge. They would like to make it entirely locally sourced but it's not possible at present. Probably one of the coolest things that we learnt about De Halve Maan is that the company has a 3km pipeline that runs under the city in order to deliver their beer brewed in the facility to the bottling plant across town. Of course the locals would love to be able to tap into this pipe to have their own wee supply of beer and to solve this potential issue the pipe only runs under the public areas of the town such as under the roads or even 37m below the towns opera house. Also the beer is not the final product when it makes this journey as it gets fermented again when it arrives at the other plant before being bottled. The beer takes 45 minutes to travel this 3km distance and our guide said they could speed this up but as she states "you must not rush a beer!". The pipeline cost €4 million ($6.7 million nzd) to build and this was entirely crowd funded. Those who invested quite a few thousands into the build were privileged with receiving a free beer everyday that they remain alive. We were taken up to the top of the plant where we could see over the entire city before heading back down many small steep steps to where we would be able to try some of their beer. There was four total - two dark and two light. Here is the name of the four beers we tried from left to right Brugs Zot, Brugse Zot Dubbel, Straffe Hendrik Tripel and Straffe Hendrik Quadrupel. I apologise to all the beer lovers out there but I rather disliked them all. I think Lew's favourite was the Straffe Hendrik Tripel which was one of the lighter beers which was less strong. It was a nice experience despite feeling rather ill but Lew had certainly had his fair share of beer as we left the brewery so next we were on the hunt for some fries of course! I couldn't handle the intense smell of fried food so I went across the road to look for a xmas decoration. I can't remember who gave us this idea but it was suggested to us that we gather a xmas decoration from everywhere we visit so that when we return home our xmas tree will be a reminder of all our fun adventures. I think we walked around the shop 5 times and couldn't pick something seeing as they were charging a whooping €15-25 ($25- 42 nzd) per item. I was really set on getting something with the cute houses which would instantly remind us of Belgium and next door they did have some cheap versions that Lew would somehow managed to attach to a string for me - SOLD! The sun had come out and we wandered around the canal soaking it up before walking back to the apartment. Lew went out for an hours run whilst I caught up on some TV and begun preparing dinner. We snuggled in, ate dinner, and watched the movie "The light between oceans" which I had already read the book version of. Highly recommend! We certainly seem to be having late nights recently since daylight savings is really throwing us off! 

Monday 2nd April

The alarm woke us up at 8am as we had the plan to do a boat ride around the canals early before the day trippers arrived. Unfortunately it was a nasty rainy day and we had to ditch the idea for perhaps next time we come and visit. We packed up and left the Airbnb at 11am walking to the nearby train station. Knowing that we didn’t book the correct tickets allowing us to travel free to Brussels today before our Eurostar train tonight we though we would ask at the information desk and plead ignorance asking whether this ticket allowed us to travel for free. The women wasn’t really sure so we ended up buying two tickets - note to all of you that my ticket being aged 25 was less than half the price of what’s Lews was being aged 26, and they never asked for ID to confirm our birthdays. He was kicking himself for not telling the usual little white lie that he is still 21 (more like denial at his increasing age)  . We weren't told what train to get on but thankfully google was able to tell us the next one bound for Brussels and the platform we had to get to. An easy 1 hour later we arrived at Brussels midi just before 1pm. Unfortunately our plans to throw our large bag into storage like we did on Monday failed as we forgot about the influx of travelers on a public holiday. We walked all around trying to search for another option before deciding we would just have to pay the €8 ($13.50 nzd) for the staffed baggage area. We did multiple laps around the baggage lockers whilst we were waiting in the line hoping that someone might have finished their sight seeing for the day. No luck. The man in charge of the baggage area initially told us it was full and pointed us in the direction of the lockers. We had already tried to fit the bag into the smaller locker but the bag was about 1cm too large! Thankfully he took pity on us and allowed us to leave back the bag. We made our way into town with only plans to look at a couple of shops since with a being a public holiday all the museums are closed. They have some beautiful French fashion and now I’m certainly on track to completely altering my wardrobe before our time in London is over. Hence a pair of dark blue high waisted shorts were coming home with me :D. We browsed some more shops before deciding we would grab some lunch at a place Lew had decided on. Of course it was a burger restaurant called Houtsiplou and we managed to sit down 10 minutes before they closed the kitchen for anyone else coming in. Rather strange since its a public holiday and only 2pm so they had to turn quite a few people away. Lew was in his element decided which sort of fancy cheese he would have with his beef patty but I was still struggling to get my appetite back and knew I wouldn't get through an entire burger. Lew decided on the one with gorgonzola cheese and I got one that was balsamic vinegar with the goats cheese omitted. Lew also decided he would try one of the Kriek beers which are another traditional Belgium beer where they add sour cherries with the pits to lambic beer (a sour and dry Belgian beer that ferments spontaneous with airborne yeast as is native to Brussels). The use of cherries predates the use of hops and the cherries are left for several months for re-fermentation of the natural sugars. This means the beer has a lovely fruity flavour without the sweetness. We were both really impressed with it especially at €2.50 ($4.20 nzd) a glass and to me it had a tiny hint of the beer flavour I dislike so much but the cherry flavour was more prominent. The burgers finally came out with a good helping of beef fat fries on the side (the best we had in Belgium by the way!) and Lew got to eat half of mine as well which never ever happens so he was pleased. Paying the bill we headed out into the streets again with the plan to go to the museum in the Broodhuis which is about the history of Belgium. This is when we realised every single museum was closed today and we would have to settle for a walk to the botanical gardens across town to waste away a few hours. It was a park sandwiched in between high rise buildings and there were a lot of strange people hanging around smoking and drinking. Everywhere we sat we would catch someones cigarette smoke as it funnelled down wind to us. We continued walking around the park and thankfully found an area with just a family relaxing on the opposite bench with no cigarettes! We relaxed on the park bench for awhile in the sunshine suddenly overcome with tiredness for no particular reason as our weekend has been nothing but relaxing and at a slow pace. Realising we needed to be at the train station in 90 minutes we made our way back across town, picked up our bag from storage and went to line up for the Eurostar. I kid you not when I tell you the line was at least 1km long down the entire station with hundreds of people queuing to get through onto the trains. We joined the back of the line with an hour to go before our train leaves but we could already tell there was no way they would get us all on in time. It was funny watching everyones faces walking down the terminal further and further when they realised how far this line went back! Thankfully 20 minutes before our train was supposed to leave a Eurostar employee walked down the line and assured us all that the train would not leave without us. Its not like there is any free trains to put us on anyway if it did leave since they are all full! Once we did finally get through the gates, security, Belgium passport control and then UK passport control there was no waiting around in a big holding pen like usual but we went straight up onto the train. We ended up being 67 minutes delayed which Eurostar put down to because they were given a train with a different seating layout and they had to rearrange everyone along with it being a very full train with delays through security and customs. It was fine since I had run to grab Lew some food for the journey since we wouldnt be eating dinner so he was happy and well fed. We tried to organise our finances since we have been using many different cards and currencies since we arrived back in London end of November and we lived off my income for at least 2 months. Im hoping I may have a small lump sum coming back to me haha! We arrived back into London an hour late and promptly fast walked with at least half of the train to the underground. We got on the Victoria line and went straight home. Another weekend of travel done and dusted! Back to work tomorrow and then we have one weekend in London before we head to both Berlin and Prague for back to back weekends. <3