The adventures of the red van: Belgium

As we crossed the border into Belgium we discovered that our gearbox no longer worked! Managed to pull off highway into an unmanned service station with only 4^th gear and rang Donna. They drive 1.5 hours to our rescue with an identical van to ours, dodgy mechanic Hussein pulls part out of van they are driving and puts it in ours and then somehow winds a bit of wire around his and drives 1.5 hours home (we think they made it).

Start most days with a choc croissant and a van made espresso coffee (quality is slowly improving). Have also started our daily French lessons (half hour, teacher is Lou, students paul and lou). Things aren’t looking good on the language front. Arrive at Ghent great little campground here with yet another very flat cycle path into town. Our suspicions are yet again confirmed that people have given up on camping for this year. Paul continues to be amazed how cheap beer is 6pk for 1.39 euro, lou amazed at how much chocolate she can convince paul to buy.

Ghent is a very cool city, large student population. Town Centre has an eerie gothic Belfry with a dragon on top, apparently a very important symbol keeping watch over the townsfolk in the middle ages. Find out that French fries actually originated in Belgium (apparently). Brugge is truly wonderful little city, would take your breath away if it weren’t for all the tourists (us included) the entire city is like one big open air museum. Went on an underwhelming brewery tour, paul begins to restrict lou’s chocolate purchasing. Waffles are divine.

Find out from home that Shell has had little baby Zach, soo excited. Celebrate with beer in great little café, informative waiter but tipsy cycle home thru cobblestone streets was…. Interesting.

Brussels, with choc croissant again in hand we set off to see the capital of Belgium and Europe for that matter. We didn’t think it was possible but the buildings in the Grand Plaza here are even more spectacular than Ghent and Brugge. A map for young Tourists that we read basically suggested it’s all same same but these buildings made us stand a little longer in the freezing wind.

After a short stroll we were standing in front of the famous Manneken Pis (a statue of a pissing boy) it’s tiny, he’s tiny and that’s all we have to say! We gave the pissing dog statue a miss.

What have we learnt?

Cars don’t work well without gearbox
Porta potti is worth the hassle
Cobblestone streets prove problematic on the bike (tour de France are nuts).
Don’t take van into big city/may not fit down narrow streets.
Chocolate in supermarkets are very tasty without tourist price tag
There are true Brussels waffles (icing sugar only on top) and Liegeois waffles (sugar baked into waffle, nothing on top) and tourist waffles (lots of chocolate, strawberries and sugar on top). Lou tries them all just to be sure.