Amsterdam to Brugge to London!

Got up early for the last time and loaded up the coach! We left Amsterdam around 8:15am and headed towards Belgium!

Around 10:30am we stopped for a service stop and after watching Shawshank Redemption on the coach, we soon arrived in Brugge, Belgium around 1pm. We didn’t have long here cos we needed to make the ferry. Jaz rushed us into the main square and after giving a brief history of the place and some historical buildings of significance, she pointed out places to eat and places to shop and off we went!

We hurried to a chip stand cos apparently Belgium is famous for its chips with mayonnaise. Also got a hot dog. Thought both were rather ordinary actually! I guess we have good chips back home! We then looked around for Belgium’s other specialty, Belgian waffles! We walked back up the street we had come and found a take away waffle store. We each got a Belgian waffle with vanilla icecream and chocolate sauce. It came on basically 2 pieces of folded cardboard and was rather difficult to eat. We found a low lying section of wall alongside the street and sat down. The waffle was good but the icecream was rather disappointing!

The last thing we did there was check out the supermarket cos Jaz told us Belgian chocolate would be cheaper there. We didn’t find a huge range so we didn’t bother.

It was back on the bus at 2pm and we zoomed off towards Calais to board the ferry back to the UK. We arrived in Calais around 3:45pm to find that our ferry was running late due to strong winds across the channel. Our rescheduled departure time was 5:25pm! We spent the time passing through immigration, taking a last group photo, and checking out the dock. Jaz also revealed that she and Matty (our driver) are dating!

Our P&O ferry arrived around 4:30pm and we watched as cars, trucks, and buses from Dover were unloaded and then the batch going to Dover loaded. Our bus drove us onto the ferry to drop us off and we said farewell to Matty (he’s based in the Netherlands)!

On board the ferry we found quite a number of services and facilities including a restaurant, bar, gaming area, duty free shop, and bureau de change. We sat with Jon and Erika in the restaurant for the 75min journey across the channel. It was nice reflecting on the good times we had had!

The journey was mostly smooth and we arrived in Dover around 6:15pm English time. We boarded an Excalibur coach to take us back to London with the other Topdeck group. The trip took almost 2hrs as The Da Vinci Code was played on the tv. What made the journey unpleasant though was the stench of urine coming from the coach’s toilet! Jaz tried cleaning it with Coke and using deodorant but the stench remained with us pretty much for the whole journey! We had to use Jaz’s scented wipes and Erika’s perfume to mask it!

We were only too glad to get off early at Victoria station! Jon and Erika and Barrett and Krista also got off here. At the underground we said farewell and took the district line to Ealing Broadway. We got to Fiona’s place around 9pm. She hadn’t had dinner yet so we headed to a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was Fiona’s treat and we got a 2 for 1 deal on the quesalladas. We shared some nachos for starters. Not bad!

Went back to Fiona’s place and Di put on scrubs! Ah…so nice to not have to wake up early tomorrow!!!

Final thoughts on the tour: Great 2 weeks!!! Got to see many places that we probably would not see on our own! Had a nice small group with people of similar age and life stages which was way better than it could’ve been if we had been stuck with double the number of 18 year olds! Good accommodation, alright food! Jaz was an awesome tour leader! She really looked after us and did everything she could to make our trip all the more enjoyable! Only downside was the early starts every day and some long driving days which meant we were quite tired much of the time. But hey we saw so much so it was worth it! Would recommend it to everyone!