Holland to Belgium

We spent a lovely few days with my Auntie, had a good gossip, catching up while she did all our washing and cooked us the most amazing food, we slept in a proper bed and my feet were clean for the whole time!

After R’s dunking in the dyke he had to buy some new shoes, the shopkeepers thoroughly enjoyed his discomfort as we told everyone why he was wearing sandals when everyone else was wearing scarves and hats!

We visited The Hague and had a look at the palace, not quite as impressive as some, the parliament and the house of justice and R got the smallest glass of wine in history and was told when we complained that wine was for tasting not drinking, that’s definitely not what the rest of Europe said.

We left refreshed and drove to Brussels with a view to staying in a camper van park and sightseeing, I wanted to show R the Mannekin and get hot chocolate from the bakers guild but when we arrived at the place where the camper stop should have been, there was nothing, just a few dodgy shops and flats, we were in the most dreadful part of the city you can imagine, I didn’t want to leave Vanley on his own so we went to Tervuren to see my old house.   It was really weird going somewhere I hadn’t been for years, when we lived there it was new, now there are enormous trees everywhere but it was eerily familiar.  I found the place where my sister and I once found a big bag of sweets and ate them!    We couldn’t get into the village because there was a fair there and we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked because everywhere closes and we didn’t fancy sitting on the side of the road again.  At least we saw the Atomium, I told R it was the Belgian version of the Eiffel Tower but he pointed out that nobody has heard of it.

We are in Bruges now and we have just sat around all day today because it was raining and Sunny was feeling very sorry for himself but tomorrow the weather is supposed to be better so we will go sightseeing and chocolate shopping.

We are noticing that it is getting more and more difficult to find places to stay, maybe we should have bought a bigger van!