Jane's Birthday Bash in Brugges

So next weekend is Jane's birthday, and in honour of the event, we went to Brugges this weekend to check out the Christmas markets. The weekend though didn't get off to a particularly good start. This was because it was seriously thunder storming on Friday night. I am still fighting this blasted cold and had made my way home via the doctor's surgery - yes, it has been confirmed, I have a viral infection, and no, they won't give me antibiotics, the blighters!. Anyway, I was walking up the road from the doctor's when the heavens absolutely erupted. In the space of 200m my jeans were absolutely soaked. But the worst of it was when I got home. I arrived to a completely dark house - unusual I thought, maybe the girls have gone out - but when I got inside I discovered they actually were home, sitting around a torch trying to eat dinner. The power had gone out. Some berk, when installing the garden lights, thought it sensible to link them to the house lights - so when the garden lights get soaking wet, the house lights go off too. But do you think we could get the power back on again? Absolutely not. And I needed power to dry off my jeans for tomorrow! In the end Dave, the landlord, had to come around and sort it out. We were a bit dubious about that, knowing his handyman skills (somewhat like Tim the Toolman Taylor) however we were lucky on this occasion and he ultimately got the power back on by isolating the fuse that the outdoor lights were on. Murphy's law though, would have it that it was the same switch as the lights to my room. Absolute bummer. So although I could power up peripherals like TVs and computers, I couldn't light my room except for candles. Fortunately though my jeans dried, and in time for the trip the next morning. Jane's friend Sharon had stayed the night, she was coming on the trip too, so we all set off fairly early in the morning and made our way down to Eurotunnel. After a fairly uneventful crossing, we headed off to Cite Europe for a spot of shopping as we weren't sure if it would be open the next day, Sunday, on our way back. We found out though that it would - it's December after all - so moseyed on around the shops for a few hours. The weather had been gorgeous leaving England, but unusually was overcast and grey when we arrived in France. This then turned into full on thunderstorms with heavy rain by the time we started to make our way to Belgium. It was quite late at night when we finally arrived at the Formule 1 in Zeebrugge, so we quickly dumped our stuff and drove into Brugges. It was absolutely pinging it down as we wandered around the remnants of the christmas market (including the giant 'swimming pool' that was the ice skating rink - devoid of skaters in this weather though) and then we went for dinner. More on that in another post. Made our way back to the hotel, and headed off for bed. The next day we went back into town and this time all the stalls of the Christmas markets were open. We spent a lovely few hours sampling waffles, hot chocolate, hotdogs etc as we wandered around the markets. I got some really nice Belgian chocolate too. Then the rain returned much more heavily so we packed up and headed back to Calais. Bit more shopping there, then off to Eurotunnel, then home. It was a very enjoyable weekend, very cheap price too when we split the price between us all! Alas, now back to school....