Chocs away!

A day trip to Belgium.....

On Friday I swapped Faithful Hound for Favourite Nephew and headed off to the continent. After an uneventful journey (except for an unusually large number of men dressed as Elvis in the passenger terminal) we arrived in France just over 3¼ hours after home.

Our first stop was the Chocolate Factory just outside Ostend. It would be more correct to call it the chocolate factory shop and it is very popular with British tourists (3 coach loads of old dears from Clacton who arrived at the same time as us). Excellent chocolate and plenty of choice, not as cheap as it used to be, thanks to the falling pound but cheap enough.

After making purchases, we went in search of sun, sea and sand. The last two were not hard to find in this part of Belgium and the sun shone gloriously as Philip and I took a regal stroll over the dunes. About a hour before the weather had been distinctly wintery, so our timing was perfect.

It was mid afternoon when we arrived in Bruges and we made for the Belfry which dominates the town. I was somewhat surprised to find it had steps, (the last belfry I went up was the Campanile in Venice which had a lift) and had I realised there were 366 of them I might have sent Philip up alone. We were treated to the hourly chimes and a chance to see the clock mechanism at work.

However the view was splendid up there, we even managed to spot Archie, parked a jaunty angle in the north of the city, (clearly visible in the centre of the picture above).




We spent the rest of the afternoon buying more chocolate and strolling around the historic city centre, enjoying the canals, the swans and beautiful brick architecture of the churches. We took Archie for a tour of Bruges which was quite interesting, including a three point turn to avoid a multi-story carpark (note to self: learn the Flemish for height barrier) and along and over the canals along some very narrow roads. It appears that parking by the canals in the north of the city is free.

On a previous visit to Bruges, I stayed at the King Albert I hotel which was very centrally placed near the bus station about 10 minutes walk from the Markt. It is an excellent spot for a weekend trip as it's only a 90 minute drive from Calais, lots to see and do and plenty of places to eat.

Talking of food, we had a very nice meal at a brasserie in the Markt, the main square in Bruges. We decided to eat on the terrace in a wind that the cast of Dallas would have appreciated. I had Belgium beef stew and Philip had steak. It appears that our very attentive waiter was expecting us and laid in extra supplies of ketchup. We rounded the meal off with some excellent deserts, waffles for me and pancakes flambéed with Grand Marnier for Philip.

We headed home along the coast road and were treated to a beautiful sunset over the Channel. Our uneventful journey turned eventful when we reached Nieuwpoort where the road disappeared into black hole. In the gathering gloom we made several circles of the town, before finding the motorway, only to discover that the west bound slip road was barred. After a trip up the motorway in the wrong direction, we were able to turn around and head for home. The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful apart from a French customs officer dusting my dashboard. We were home at midnight making it a very long, very full day.