Inspired by the great British weather I decide to undertake a Railbookers rite of passage – to Italy via the Swiss Alps. I made my way on the London DLR to London City Airport, fantastic for its tiny size and smaller queues, and set off for Zurich airport. The grey clouds and rainy weather melted away as we head over France and into Switzerland, touching down in Zurich airport where the sun most definitely had his hat on. After a 15 minute journey from the airport I was in the centre of Zurich.
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The Grande Casselbergh in Bruges is our newest hotel in Bruges and is designed in a similar luxurious style to the Oud Huis de Peellaert, which comes as no surprise as it is created by the same people. The Grande Casselbergh is grand (to say the least) and you really get the feeling that they’ve pulled out all of the stops for this one.
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I didn’t know that much about Lille before spending the weekend there. To be honest, it wasn’t somewhere that I had thought about visiting. For the most part I have, shamefully, stuck to European capital cities and places that I have driven through accidently on the way to somewhere else without really knowing their names. After visiting Lille, however, I can see why it’s such a popular destination.
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Everyone’s heard about the recent Eurostar mishaps, trains breaking down in the tunnel, people not being able to travel home before Christmas and all of the apologetic media statements from Eurostar staff to the general public. It looked like a bit of a disaster on TV (that’s what the news is for after all), was I the only person to think that actually it might not have been that bad to spend a couple more days in Paris?
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After walking around Bruges all day doing my Christmas shopping I had worked up an appetite and I was glad that Richard and I had a reservation at the De Vlaamsche Pot, a traditional Flemish restaurant tucked away in Bruges cobbled streets.
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I had previously been to Bruges during the summer, and whilst it’s great to wander round Bruges in the sunshine and have coffee and pastries in the cafes on the cobbled streets, it is nearing Christmas and I hadn’t started my Christmas shopping. I hadn’t seen Bruges during Christmas before, and the Christmas markets are always so popular I thought that I would go and see what all of the fuss was about.
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