Guests

Last, last week Katie arrived. 
Its been pretty cute having a little bit of family around again.

With my mum visiting, Jack visiting and now Katie moving here to live I haven't felt quite so far from home.

We've taken her out the last two Friday's, shown her a bit of London. Her arriving also meant the count down to our next holiday. 

We are off to Barcelona in 2 sleeps, and I cant wait!! We have an amazing apartment booked right in the city close and close to the beach. Its a bit of a Bright clan holiday with Ben, Katie, Jack, Emma and Dwayne and me.
Jack is coming to the end of his holiday, and Emma and Dwayne just starting theirs, it should be interesting! 5 days of sibling love :)

Once we get back from Barcelona its crunch time, its time to post my visa application so we can stay. Here's hoping they let me back into the UK to apply for it though, will have to look for the friendliest border officer when I land. 

London has been pretty good to us lately, the sun has been shining, and the weekends have been great, so we've been making the most of it before the snow and cold comes. 
We had Jared and Pip here last weekend so caught up with them on Saturday for lunch and a few drinks with Mike and his gf Christina.
Yesterday Ben and I rode around London on the Barclay's bikes- played half an hour of tennis and rode home. 
And last Sunday it was a boozy brunch with a beautiful friend, with wedding planning chat. 

I often swing between wanting home, and not wanting to leave. They say London takes a piece of your heart when you leave, and though my heart is at home in NZ, I can tell you I will be leaving some of mine here.

2 years since we moved us just around the corner, and though sometimes hard I wouldn't change a thing.

Brugge

Brugge is the most magical place,

Ben and I went there for a weekend 2 weeks ago, and it was so special.

After 3 short hours and 2 train rides we arrived in Brugge.

Our taxi dropped us off at the hotel and we were transported to another era. The entire place is cobblestone, and there are horse and carts everywhere.

We checked in to our quaint little hotel and decided to explore. There was so much history and everything so authentic. Unfortunately it decided to rain- hard! So we headed back to our hotel for a little nap- the hangovers from the night before were the reason for it, and it worked out perfectly.

After our 2-3 hour nap we woke up and the sun was shining! We got ready for dinner and headed out to a beer cafe we had seen good review for t'Brug Beertje. It had over 300 Belgium beers on offer, so we got to tasting.

The first beer I had was my favourite of the whole trip- a peach and honey 9% beer that was absolutely delicious. We chose of the Flemish menu not really knowing what we were in for but chose well! After about 5 different beers each we headed off for dinner suitably drunk!
There is no such thing as a 3 or 4% beer over there so we had a great time getting a different sort of tipsy- one I recommend to all!
We headed to a restaurants in the Market Square and had mussels, a pizza and 2 giant beers. Brugge is bit on mussels and they were delicious, the entire kg of them!

We wandered around for a little bit, enjoying the Belfry and other gorgeous buildings at night.
We got a bit lost, found our way and went home to sleep off the beers.

Day two after our yummy hotel breakfast we headed out to explore, we started with a canal cruise which was a beautiful way to see the city. We saw the old fish market, went to an antique market, where I fell in love with a copper pot, that I went back for later but had been sold!
Early afternoon rolled around. So we headed to the Beer museum, we spent about an hour learning all about the history of beer and other facts, then used our 3 tokens to sample what they had on offer.
We would have been impressed if we hadnt have gone to Beertje's the day before as they didnt have the unique flavours we had tried.

So we went to the Half Moon Brewrey and tried some locally brewed beer right from the tanks. Once we had tried their beers, we went off to another little beer cafe which has 12 beers to offer. It was a cool little place, if not for the rowdy English tourists making scenes.
Having enough beer there, we went home, booked a restaurant, got ready and headed back to Beertje's to try some more beers- notice a theme here? ha
We sampled more- not wanting to drink the same beer twice the whole weekend we were doing a pretty good job at it.

We headed to the restaurant, I had a delicious seafood pasta, and Ben more mussels.
during dinner I had my only glass of wine! Was a bit odd to have some after all the delicious beers.
After dinner, realising the extent of our afternoon we headed to a waffle shop for a bit of a drunken waffle and wandered around Brugge getting lost, exploring and slowly making our way home to pass out.

We woke up to our last day- Sad we had to leave after such a fun weekend, we brought our favourite beers to bring home with us, we brought some chocolate, another delicious waffle and headed home back to the hotel to make our way home.

It was the best holiday we have had- Palma, and Brugge are definately our top holidays- for different things, but equally amazing.

There's nothing like a weekend of fun away to make me fall in love with my amazing boyfriend more and more.
Travelling and having fun with him is what life is all about for me.

Here's a few photos to show you what fun we had!

View from the beer museum



 



 





 







Outside Beertje's



Waffles!

Doggie in the window from the movie In Bruges