Well the last week and a bit has been pretty hectic for us, as I imagine it has been for most people. We’ve had the usual Cristmas celebrations and New Year with our Anniversary sandwiched inbetween.
We planned on spending Christmas with our southern friends (Kim, Ezra, Ross, Nick, Neil, Lisa) in London. With public transport shutting down for Christmas day this meant having to train it into London on the 24th. This was looking like a daunting prospect when Jasmin came down with a Flu the day before. By that evening Jasmin was feeling like she could manage the trip without dieing and so coupled with the fact that we only had rice in our cupboards, we boarded a train and headed into London. We were pretty tired that night so it wasn’t long before we crashed out in Cam’s room (thanks Cam!).
Christmas morning was spent over at Neil’s place. We all packed up our prezzies and some food/alcohol and humped it down the road. Champagne breakfast!! In a flury of wrapping paper, prezzies were exchanged, champagne downed and much cheese was consumed. As the stores of alcohol decreased and the voices increased, Jasmin had to try and find some sanctuary as it wasn’t helping her flu at all. Most of the day was spent playing games of various types (memory shock was quite popular). As day started to turn to night, people in turn started making their way back to Kim and Ezra’s place where Christmas dinner was to be had. I prepared my first vege pie under the instruction of Jasmin, and by all accounts it was a success. Jasmin was feeling pretty crappy come dinner time and so I spent the evening Cams room with her while Scattergories raged below us.
Boxing day was a lesson in patience. Public transport had been restored in London so we said our goodbyes and embarked on our homward voyage. We got out to Paddington station and found out to our dismay that there were no National Rail services running. Grrrr! So we had to catch a train to Heathrow, and then catch a bus back to Reading. This all proved to be rather distressing, and costly too. A fitting end to a memorable Christmas (even if for the wrong reasons).
For our first Anniversary we spent 3 days in Brussels, Belgium. This got off to a flying start when we tried to catch our bus to the airport. While Jasmin and our bags got on the bus, I went to get our tickets. Due to a failing of the card reader at the ticket desk I had to run upstairs to get some cash out. It was at this stage that Jasmin called me to say that the Bus had left with her on it. So I ended up having to wait half an hour to catch the next one. When I finally got to the airport and met up with Jasmin, we still had to get to Terminal 4 which meant a quick train ride. Except that there were “Engineering works” and the train was only running every 30 minutes, and of course we had just missed the last one. All of this was making us rather late for our flight. We finally got there in the end and made it to our gate moments before they started boarding. From this point things got easier. The flight was only about an hour. We cleared customs and found the train station, managed to navigate to the Central Station, and then had the pleasure of being able to walk just across the road to our Hotel.
There wasn’t much time to see too much that evening but we decided to head out and find some dinner. Brussels is really pretty at night during Christmas. There were lots of people about. Lots of pretty lights and a mixture of architecture ranging in styles from what looked like the 1560’s right up to the 1960’s. The highlight was the Gothic looking buildings at the Grand Place. These were made even cooler by an awesome light show they play there every night during Christmas time. There were lots of stalls and little shops all over the cobbled streets. These mainly consisted of Waffles and Chocolate. One particular street seemed to be dedicated to restaurants. Seafood restaurants in particular. It was at this point that we realised it was going to be quite difficult to find vegetarian food. We suffered through a less than appealing meal (pasta and soup) and retired to our Hotel. We decided to stop in the Hotel bar for some drinks before we went to bed. This turned out to be pretty neat as the bar was really beautiful and they had the World Strongman Competition on TV.
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Anniversary day! Yay! We dressed up warm and headed out into the streets of Brussels. We spent most of the day wandering around the Cristmas market where we discovered Vin Chaud (mulled wine). This we have found out, is the perfect drink for a cold day. There are few things more satisfying than drinking a warm cup of mulled wine with a nip of Amerretto on a cold winters day. There was an Ice rink in the middle of the market which I planned on making use of, but upon watching people hitting the ice on a number of occassions, I thought I would prefer to stick with my Vin Chaud. We then stumbled across a Pomme Frittes stall (french fries) that had a huge selection of sauces you can ask for. So we promptly got ourselves a good helping of Frittes and Tartare sauce to complement some Vin Chaud. Set up right down the end of the market was a huge Ferris Wheel towering above the nearby buildings. So after finishing some Vin Chaud we went for a spin on it. It had an awesome view from the top and was really cool as well as being absolutely freezing. Upon finishing our ride we grabbed some Vin Chaud (are you seeing a theme here?) and continued our wanderings. It was getting late and we were getting a little weary so we popped back to our Hotel room for a bit of a rest before heading out to dinner (which we had booked earlier in the day upon the recommendation of the Concierge). The venue for Dinner was really cool, apparently it used to be an old Bank. Again the vegetarian options were lacking, and more to the point they were disgusting too (apparently their Vegetable Lasagne dosn’t come with Pasta or cheese. Just vegetables). It wasn’t a total loss though because we were tempted to try the desert and were pleasantly surprised by the most delicious Chocolate Mousse ever!!
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We didn’t really have any concrete plans for the next day, and after a little hunting around on the Internet I found that there was an Ice Sculpture display in Brugge. So we decided to take a day trip out there. A quick 1 hour train ride found us in Brugge. Now it was quite fortunate that the display was right outside the station. However it was unfortunate that we had to wait in line for about 45 mins to get in. Once inside though it was pretty neat. It was themed in Ice Age 2 (the movie). There were lots of Eskimo and Indian themed sculptures too (some really cool totem poles). Thats pretty much all we got up to that day. Traveling and queuing took up most of the day.
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The last day brought about a slightly rushed trip to the Airport after I found out that the flight was actually about an hour earlier than I thought it was. After navigating trains, planes, more trains and busses, we were pretty happy to be home (public transport really sucks sometimes). Overall Belgium was a bit of a mixture. There were some really neat things like the Grand Place and the Ice sculptures, Christmas Market and Vin Chaud. But there were also some trying times with finding vegetarian food and alot of time spent traveling.
New Years Eve turned out to be pretty uneventful for us. We spent the whole day at home, sleeping, reading, and eating (yay for food in the cupboards again). But we did have a really awesome New Years Day. We hadn’t got each other presents for any of the 3 occasions just passed becuase we spend pretty much all our time together and just don’t get the time to go do secret present stuff. So we spent most of the day scurrying all over Reading visiting New Years Day sales and finding presents for each other. It was a day well spent and a fitting end to our week of Celebrations!
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