The pesky wasps have now been replaced with B’s, a sure sign we’re getting closer to that once so distant ‘A’, which will signal the end of this incredible journey across Europe from Z to A.

We caught the train from Paris to Brussels, because we’re certainly not willing to ever drive in Paris again. If you’ve ever been to both these cities then you’ll know this probably wasn’t the right order in which to visit them. Paris is a dream, like being serenaded by Edith Piaf while swimming in a pool of wine, butter and cheese, whereas Brussels is more like being punched in the face by Jean-Claude van Damme.

After a week in Paris, we were finally able to get some real culture in Belgium, achieved through drinking as many different local beers as possible and thus many different cultures…Al and Tones came over from The Hague to stay with us, which meant more time was spent on our rooftop garden drinking and looking over the construction site next to us, towards the lovely Turkish quarter, than was spent wandering the filthy streets. We did at least manage one breakfast with (deconstructed) mimosas on a balcony (we miss Paris), had a Flemish stew at a tourist trap (which sounds even worst than Dalmatian stew and…was), saw a little boy and girl peeing, passed by a bar that was a haunt of Karl Marx that is now the most expensive restaurant in town (hilarious), worked up the energy to go on a walking tour of all the good bits, which only covered about 500m, but took 2 hours (I guess because the guide waffled on a bit…), Lea had mussels in Brussels, we all had amazing frites, Tones and I did a beer tasting for science (because scientists look out for each other) and woke up after a bender with what felt sledgehammers ringing in our ears…which turned out to be from the sledgehammers next door, so at least our hearing is still ok.

Although Brussels wasn’t all that bad, it did have us both a little worried about moving on to Bruges. We needn’t have worried. So perfect to be in another fairytale town at the back end of our trip. All you can do there is drink beer, eat waffles, decorate stuff with lace and wander around the canals through the amazingly preserved medieval streets. And that we did…apart from the decorating. We had our first brewery tour of the trip (I’m sure you’re supposed to do more beer tours on honeymoon) complete with unfiltered, unpasteurised beers for breakfast (to sit on top of the previous two-steak-day), we saw a young man suffer morning sickness outside the beer museum, which we took as a sign and promptly entered to see if we could learn about the cause of his illness…James did, as they “shared” all six “tastings”.

Apart from waffles, we also ate a quiche, sitting on the footpath, in the rain while locals and tourists alike crossed the street to avoid being asked for a coin, to help with our next meal. Although, we would have had to sit there for quite some time to cover the next meal, as it was at our only Michelin starred restaurant of the trip. I don’t think climbing the 366 stairs of the Belfry or our walking tour quite covered that meal, as you soon realise why they call them Michelin stars, leaving with your head seeing stars and a few extra tyres around the middle.

After two lovely days in Bruges we had a night in Ghent.  Probably what Bruges would be like if it were still a real town.  Nice, but not Bruges.  We did manage to have one of the most fun and tasty dinners of the trip before hitting up the Pink Flamingo (which I also don’t think is a euphemism, but might be / should be) to help get through a respectable number of the literally* millions of beers they have in this country.

*Totally not literal.  But I think there are over 1000 and “we” probably only tried ~30.