In Bruges

Despite the worst start to the British winter ever known in my life time we decided to battle on and still go ahead with the planned trip to Bruges - via the car.

06:00 hours Matt Eaton and wife-to-be arrived at the Rose Villa estate for the pick up, still sad over the loss of the chicken's I'd been up early and exploring the even fresher fox prints in the snow. The organisation of this trip was pretty non existent on my part. I only really packed core essentials the morning of let alone had any euros / european power plugs etc so the channel crossing service station proved use for more than the XL bacon cheeseburger breakfast option.

Bruges itself was simply stunning. New cluttered street signage, no yellow lines, no brutal 1960s/1970s architecture just wonderfully cute (small bricked) buildings.

We experienced a range of (in the words of an irish actor) gay beers, including Quack, the guillotine, hoegaarden rose, judas etc.... had a horse ride, saw the chocolate museum and just generally relaxed. I met an interesting coffee retailer who introduced me to giant coffee beans and sold me some green beans which I later roasted in the Rose Villa Estate pizza oven = nice.

As we were making good time on the way home we stopped off at the French hyper markets, wine, cheese and some more cheese were the order of the day and between the four of us we picked up enough supplies to power through until Christmas. Aside from an incident in a French car park, which probably destroyed Mr Eaton's chances of becoming a British Diplomat to France, the driving and entire trip was very smooth. A great way to enjoy a long weekend. Highly recommend being In Bruges.