Waffling about in Brussels

Day 2 – Awoke bright and early (courtesy of some particularly early risers in our dorm!) and went for a bit of a jog around the city (I did the first leg then Fran joined the party later on). Saw lots of cool stuff, plus the exciting sight that is the European Commission building! Found out that Belgians enjoy rush hour as much as the British; sitting on their car horns quite regularly when they’re held up for more than 15 seconds!

A slightly sweaty Rich by a large gatey thing (Triomfboog / Arc de Triumph)

 

Weird sculpture tree thing

80’s metal fans may appreciate the name of the tram…!

Not the magic kingdom…

Tucked into some scrumptious Belgian Waffles for brekkie this morning (see delightful photo below!) and wandered round the old town. One of Brussels’ main highlights is ‘Manneken Pis’ or the Pissing Boy. Cue about a hundred shops themed around said landmark – can’t say seeing a chocolate sculpture weeing chocolate is going to make me buy the produce!

Waffle banter (thanks Greg!)

Chocolatetastic!

Poor Paddington looks terrified by the weird chocolate boy weeing chocolate…

So wrong…

More chocolate…

Massive chocolate chicken

Today was quite a chocolate-heavy day – had some amazing chilli chocolate, hot chocolate, champagne chocolate, nutmeg chocolate (at Planete Chocolat – thanks Hedley and Ciara!) – think we need a chocolate detox tomorrow! Off to Cologne tomorrow which should be cool as we can use our GCSE German to good effect by I telling people that my favourite subject is History or that ‘I like rollerskating’.

Finally, those of you with a schoolboy sense of humour like me may appreciate the following bus we spotted…

And they’re off!

After an emotional farewell to our flat this morning we attempted to lift our somewhat overladen rucksacks, carrying them all of 10 metres to the car before a relaxing journey down the M40 into the big smoke to the start line for a marathon journey – St. Pancras International.

 

The obligatory farewell to our families was suitably emotional – not a dry eye in the station! Having picked up our tickets for the super-fast tube train we sped through check-in at the last possible  moment, settled into our seats, and waited for the inevitable ‘technical difficulty’ at Ebbsfleet International (probably leaves on the line) to be resolved before speeding to Belgium!

Our noble steed

Gooning around at St. Pancras

Trains, rails and wires going past really fast – a summary of the Eurostar

Yerr – made it to Brussels

The arrival in Brussels was very smooth, however the three quarters of an hour attempting to work the Brussels Metro ticket machines and finding the right tram was probably not our finest 45 minutes!!! Doesn’t bode amazingly well seeing as the instructions were actually in English – I blame it on the champers on the Eurostar! Anyway, made it to our hostel eventually – basic but clean (a bit like me – at the moment anyway) and we’re typing this from the fairly chilled out (other than some raucous American girls going bananas on the drinking games) lounge in the hostel. Plan of action tomorrow is for a visit to Brussels’ finest chocolate emporiums and sample the produce just to make sure it’s all fit enough for consumption for all of you back home – how noble of us!!!

Bloomin’ awesome leaving party!

A MASSIVE THANK YOU from us both to all those who made the trek up to Oxford last night for our leaving do! We had an absolutely amazing time and it was great to see all our very best friends – YOU RULE!!!! Fran apparently had elephants tap-dancing in her head this morning whilst I was fresh as a daisy. It did however turn out that I was still drunk and I now feel like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.

 

 

 

We’ll miss everyone lots and hope that we can see some of you in a few far-flung places, otherwise we’ll see you in 2011! All the best to all those getting married whilst we’re away – we’ll toast you wherever we are!

Lots of love, Rich & Fran

13 days left…

Looking forward to our leaving drinks on Saturday – think we may have to consume a beverage for each country we’ll be passing through! Although I’m thinking Vietnamese snake wine might be quite hard to source on the Cowley Road – maybe not though!

See you at Cafe Tarifa from about 2pm on Saturday 20th!

First Post - Yeah!!! 2 weeks to go!

This is our first post on the Rich's Big Happy Trip blog. We've done a massive amount of travel admin (or 'tradmin' as it's been catchily nicknamed) over the last 6 months for what should be a quite frankly wicked 5 month overland extravaganza! Vietnam, Russia, China and Mongolia visas - check. Trans-Mongolian train booked - check. 2 backpacks with far too little capacity purchased - check! Think we're going to have to travel in the buff to save weight - I'm keen but Fran says it might get a smidgen cold in Mongolia! Anyway, enough rambling - hopefully sorted out the map at the top of the page which will be updated with our latest whereabouts as and when we get to an Internet connection to update it! Massively looking forward to it - got lots to do at work until the 26th (a week on Friday - oh blimey!) but will hopefully fit in a moment to pack some more stuff up. Or more than likely leave it until the night before we leave!!!