Brussels and Luxembourg. Part 2.

I haven't actually written up the second part of this mainly due to life being a bit hectic and the second half of the holiday being so busy.

I completely forgot that on day 3 we actually went to a musical instruments museum, which was a good few hours. I don't know why I forgot?! It was a really good museum actually, and the instruments were accompanied by headphone jacks that you could plug into to hear a sample of the music made by each instrument.  The only thing that I would say is that the museum wasn't very well maintained and some of the lights were out, and some of the jacks wouldn't work. I also had to work overtime on translating as most of the labels were only in French and Flemish. I can't really complain though as it was really inspirational and really really interesting and as under 25s we got automatic student rate at only 3 euro each!

I wouldn't really write about the evenings in hotels, but I am sure as you continue reading you will know exactly why I am writing about the night of day three.

We were planning on leaving the hotel before 9am to drive the scenic route to Luxembourg city via. Vianden. We had planned the drive and had settled down for an early nights sleep by 10pm. We heard some commotion in the hallway and someone knocking loudly on the door of one of the other hotel rooms. Martin  was annoyed and the guy was still making some noise so we watched some hour long documentary, and then turned off the television after that. They guy was still out there yelling in French, and we heard him say "enough is enough" in English, so we could only assume that he had been locked out of his room by someone else. Half an hour passed, and he was still keeping us awake so Martin, charged out of the door in his cow print pyjamas and nearly ripped the door of the wall told the bloke to shut up. and walked into the room again.

So they guy shut up for maybe half an hour, but he then went and had a cigarette in the damn hallway. We were annoyed as being freaking suffocated and tried to use the ipad to take a video of him under the door! That didn't work and we couldn't exactly march straight past him to reception and complain so I attempted to ring them. They didn't answer. Damn. We heard other people down the hallway complaining to this bloody idiot, and going back to their room. In the end Martin fell asleep by 1am, which was more important as he was going to drive. I remember still being awake at 3am.

Day 4

The following morning as we left our room and went to check out, the bloke was still standing in the corner, looked up at us, and then looked away sheepishly in to the corner. I guess he was ashamed, and so he bloody should be! He was middle aged so he should know better. We complained to reception upon checkout and they just said it was odd, because there should not be anyone in the room next to us. The receptionist did go up to investigate as we were leaving for the car.

The drive to Vianden was pretty good, some nice views. We were a bit annoyed that there was a lack of "Welcome to Luxembourg" signs. I followed on the paper map, so it was pretty easy. We did however nearly end up in Germany due to Martin forgetting to brake for a bend. xD We drove along the German border, and followed the river. The castle at Vianden was pretty easy to find and we stopped of here as planned for a visit to the castle and a break from the car.

I got to speak German for the first time on the the holiday. Weeeee.

The castle was in ruins until it was restored in the 1980's, it has been restored to the point that most of the upstairs rooms, were in the liveable state of the era. So the rooms were decorated and there was music of the era playing in the background. It was so awesome. I kept on landing in my daydream world and therefore walking off. Haha.

There were some epic sets of armour in the museum part, and halberds! check out this guy.

After the castle we didn't walk around the town as the rain was really damn miserable.

We got back in the car and preceded to drive on to the capital Luxembourg.

This part of the drive was quite interesting, as we had to drive on some crappy flyover type thing behind a lorry over the river as they were building some type of hydroelectric dam. Then no less than 20 minutes later we were directed by the Satnav to go on to a motorway that hadn't even been built yet! They were cutting the tunnels through the mountains! Bearing in mind this Satnav was around 7 years old and not updated, that is a bit odd!

Anyway we got into the city and the Novotel was on the Kirchberg Plateau, which had loads of building work and roadworks, so we drove around for an hour looking for the car park, we could se the hotel and not the car park! Frustrating. in the end i ended up asking the parking attendant of the European court. He didn't speak English so I asked in German and he replied in French. Thanks to his help we found the car park very quickly, but ended up parking in the Novotel suite car park instead of the Novotel car park  but they were not bothered.

Our room had a nice view and a bath! yaaaaay! I hate showers that I am not used to.

We walked into Luxembourg centre, which took about 30 minutes, but we had to walk over the pont rouge (massive red bridge) which Martin was not a fan of doing! We wandered around the centre for ages and then walked down to Grund which was the old town that was right at the bottom of the valley. This was really lovely and is apparently a good place for nightlife?! We ended up eating at Quick burger, and waiting 20 mins for our burgers again, and we went to the tourist office to plan the next day. We went for a fairly early night and caught up with emails and blogs etc... as we had had a very busy day.

Day 5

We got up and wandered into the main town. We had pain du chocolat  for breakfast nom! We then went into both sets of Casements, (underground fortresses) and we looked around the Notre dame cathedral and saw (obviously we didn't go in) the burial crypt of the royals of Luxembourg. The cathedral had some art exhibition in it which was quite interesting. I can't remember where I put the card but I will post the web address on a blog when I find it. We wandered some more around the whole city and saw gringotts! Well not really but the bank of Luxembourg which had underground vaults. We had McDonalds and then headed back to the Kirchberg plateau. we wandered over to look at the philharmonic hall, and then found the art museum which we walked past and got some awesome views and pictures. We went past the 3 acorns redoubt museum, which was closed and had a look at the national park type area, ans what looked like a grassy mastaba (step pyramid). We also found ourselves looking at some old fortress ruins. We then headed back to the car, after debating which church was which, that we could see from the top of the step pyramid.

The drive back was unspectacular, and it only got dark as we crossed the French border from Belgium and the roads only got busy as we reached Lille. We did take a few wrong turns, mainly due to the Satnav not knowing the road layout, but luckily we were able get back on the road I would say that we only lost about 15 minutes. We got to Calais quite early and had to wait for quite a while. The crossing was fine, and we spent our time competitively playing angry birds space.

It was pretty damn foggy in Kent, and again unspectacular and we arrived in Hockley with 40 miles left on the tank of petrol. So all is good. Got in the house at around 2 am :D

Trollbyt out!

Pas de mayonnaise! quelques jours à Bruxelles

Day 1:

4 AM Bank holiday Monday: We get up have a rushed breakfast and leave the house for a 2 hour drive to dover in kent to catch the 7:30 ferry to calais. We actually arrived in Dover early enough to catch the 6:40 ferry, hurrah! one hour early! The fery crossing was fine, but unspectacular. I felt sick all car journey, probably due to my eating breakfast, which I don't normally do. I actually felt better on the ferry crossing, despite the fact that I was dreading it as I was already feeling nauseous. I forced myself to eat a few beans and a slice of toast from Martin's plate. We then went upon deck, which helped blow the nausea away hooray! The drive from Calais to Brussells was also unspectacular, although we did enjoy the road signs and scary, aggressive belgian driving.

Our hotel (Best western) was easy enough to find, our satnav decided to work with about 10 miles to go! I forgot to mention earlier that our satnav was a complete upstart. It's a pretty good jobthat we already knew the route... mostly. We already knew we were right beside the national stadium, and it turns out that we can actually see one of Brussels' best attractions from our hotel window The Atomium.

We parked up in the free street parking immediately outside the hotel, and we had got here at 11AMish. We were able to check in straight away, so we dumped our bags in the hotel room and went out to Mini Europe and The Atomium. We got grabbed by a giant orange tortoise, and had to pose for a picture. After that we took a good wander around the Mini Europe exhibition, which was very good, but it started to rain midway through... this rain was set to continue... and continue... After Mini Europe we headed to The Atomium, which was quite interesting, and there was an exhibition on architectural concrete. TERASBETONI. Just had to throw that in there. it also looked from the inside like a space station of some kind. DEATHSTAR :-3 At the top most "museum ball" they told us that the atomium was only meant to last for two months after the Expo in the 50's, vote of confidence right there. After wandering around the museum areas, and going down an escalator with some funky lighting, w then had to queue for 30 mins to get the lift, 102m up to the viewing platform and resturant area. The resturant wouldn't let us in *grumble* but we got a decent view of brussels, it would have been better if not for the rain. After that, we had  bit more of a wander in the rain, and managed to find a resturant, and after trying to recover my knowledge of the French language from my brain vaults, managed to get a very nice dinner. We then retired to the hotel and watched whacky French language cartoons, because the weather was rather British.


Day 2:

Unbeknownst to us the entire public transport service was disrupted by strikes, due to a colleague being killed on Saturday. We got one of the buses running the skeleton service, and then went on to wander around Brussels center... in the rain. We found the Mannekin Pis statue/fountain near one of the Tintin tour murals (the only one we saw). The Mannekin, was surrounded by hundreds of Japanese tourists, seriously they must come by the truckload! We got yelled at by a Belgian man for some reason? haha. We found a shopping mall by accident, and ate there which was rather nice. After this we walked towards gare du nord, but missed the station, and ended up in Algeria. Well not quite but it very much felt like mini Algeria. After a brief stint here, we found our way back to gare du nord, and a kind Belgian man pointed us back to the main city centre. We did a bit of the touristy thing and some shopping, becaus ethe rain was getting us down a bit. We found our way to Dellerium, a very nice bar. In Dellerium, they had pink elephants on the ceiling, and a very drunk Japanese girl, who proved to be the highlight of our daily entertainment. In Dellerium I managed to drink 500ml of beer without feeling like dying from awful tastes. I tried the Kreik (cherry) and Framboise (raspberry) and Martin tried various Belgian beers. We the decided to pop in the tourist info office to get a decent map, as the one we had was absolutely rubbish. We then got the bus back home, which took 1 hour to travel 100m, and 2 hours to get home which took only about 30mins on the way into town.

Day 3:

Today the metro was running hooray! The first glimmers of sunlight! There were still disruptions but we managed to get about much easier toda, and visit many more places. We visited the botanical gardens on the way out and then we went to the European parliament buildings, and went around the visitors centre which was jam packed with audio guide activities, we coud have spent all day in there, in fact I think we spent two hours in there and we skipped half of the info out. After this we wandered towards the palace, and then to the cathedral. After this we wandered back towards the grand place, and had a drink in a bar, the ate in a place called quick burger, which proved to be really damn slow. This is where the title of this entry comes from, why the hell to they put mayonaisse on everything. I can eat it, but I tend to feel rather ill afterwards. Pas de mayonaisse s'il vous plait! I still haven't had Belgian waffles though, I hope to fit that in before Luxembourg tomorrow.

Sorry if my typing is terrible, my laptop keyboard is awful.

Freedom to do as I please!

Ahhh tomorrow is a week since our wedding! It's gone so fast! I have been awful at working on my clothing business www.plutoniumforge.com in recent months, but now the wedding is out of the way I can get cracking.

So today my first port of call was to answer loads of unanswered emails from suppliers, well I say loads ( I mean like 10). I then went on begin restyling my website, I spent all day pretty much on the first page, so hopefully the time and effort will pay off! I hope to have new stock and a new and improved website up and running in two weeks.

Why today? Well today is the first day that my energy levels have been good enough since the wedding to do anything more than mope about. Also it's the first of the month, and I love nothing more than turning over a new leaf on the first day of a month!

So March 2012 is set to be quite exciting! I have also started a new food blog, and I hope to start blogging more frequently in general. So here's to making my first whole month as a married woman, a successful one.

Presumed consent -Organ Donation-

I have been reading a lot recently about discussions in the welsh government about introducing a new law, where, when a person dies then their organs are put up for donation unless they have opted out. If this is introduced in Wales, there is a chance the rest of the UK will follow. I am definitely leaving the UK if presumed consent becomes law. I have no issue with people donation or receiving organs, however, I am against my own organs being harvested, this is mainly because I would not take organs myself. I feel that if the opt out law was passed, then we would have endless lawsuits and cases where an opt out request has been misfiled or lost! Can you imagine?!?!

I would also find it really hard to donate the organs of a loved one as it freaks me out, I just feel that we are artificially prolonging life, it just seems really ... against nature. I mean I am quite against a lot of medical intervention, I should have died as a baby, and I am still annoyed about the way I was brought into the world. (It's not like I asked to be here) I think we as a race have become greedy for life, I have worked with the old, and I think that we should be allowed to slip away gracefully, and not like one of Frankenstein's creations. My views are probably "controversial" but I can not and will not change them. Why should I? The only medicine I really agree with is to improve quality of life, not prolong it. I am going to wait in my cave for the torches and pitchforks....

What I want this year.

Well it's a new year and I have always made myself empty promises every new year recently. This year though, with the days until the wedding falling off the edge, I have realised it's time to really step up and dance with the devil.

It's been five months today, since my foot operation, and I seem to be healing well. I have previously been scared to re-break the bone in my foot, but I need to put that behind me now. With a new foot, comes a new me, I need to exercise more, I was always active, but in recent years it became rather painful to do the normal activities I enjoy, such as walking and running, and more bloody expensive to go swimming. I think I'm the only one with an interest in Hockey, and basketball. and I rarely go ice-skating (My favourite). It all needs to change now and I'm going to start running again and using the kinect to get a little more movement that way.

As well as a fitness goal I have a goal to learn to play the bass guitar I have had for years and step up on my lazy approach to learning languages.

I have decided to keep everyone updated on my progress of my yearly goals, as it is so much better when people expect things of you. You make a better effort for others rather than yourself!

so what do I want to get from this year?

1. I want to be more positive, the wedding planning has installed really really negative feelings to society in me. I want to look on the wedding as a positive step up in my life, It's really I hate being the centre of attention and that has made me resent the whole process. I have decided to write a blog about the wedding and the planning process.
2. I want to find a proper job, I want to work at least 35 hours a week, preferentially in an office in London. However if I do not succeed by July I will look at becoming a midwife.
3. I want to increase my fluency in German, Finnish and Swedish.
4. I want to take more pride in my physical appearance, the last few years I have been feeling a little dumpy and I have shied away from that.
5. I want to grow my business and make myself successful.
6. I want to be able to afford to move home.

This all seems a bit odd to post this on the internet, but as i said before, I feel it will motivate me that people know my intentions and will be watching if I fail. (Which I won't!)

Forget billy goats... this troll is after Sheep!!!

Walking into the wool shop the Troll looked around, checking each skein for composition percentages... 75% acrylic... 100% acrylic ... 65% wool ... None that had the desired composition.

The lady behind the counter asks if she can help, the Troll explains that she is looking for yarn that is at least 85% wool in composition. The lady looks about the shop but says the only yarn they have in this composition is pure merino wool. Which is far too expensive and not very good for the pattern the Troll was going to knit. She couldn't help thinking it was a little bit preposterous that a shop claiming to sell wool only sold synthetic blends. All the shops in the area were the same.

The Troll returned to her bridge empty clawed. The pattern she was going to knit to keep her feet warm, was a pair of felted Norwegian house slippers, that and a cosy pair of Mukluks. The wool suggested in the first pattern was a Norwegian brand, the Troll remembered that she was visiting Denmark the following week, so thought to have a look there.

She searched and searched but to no avail, it was all just acrylic again. On her return journey she passed through Texel an island renowned for it's wool. It took a while but the Troll eventually found what she was searching for! Hurrah! Just as well as the Troll was beginning to plan the kidnap of a Texel Sheep!

She danced her happy Troll dance in the shop, so consumed by the happiness of finding wool at last!

So now the Troll is back under her bridge, knitting away. She could not get the correct weighting of yarn but that will only take a calculation of tensions and needle sizes. She is very happy with her Dutch and Icelandic wools all from Texel yay!

This is just a story of one small Troll and her mission for wool that is wool, from a sheep and not some 'orrible black stuff.

Moikka!

A Trip to Denmark

So it's been a while since I last wrote anything, mainly because my life is quite boring. I now have a few things to write about so lets start with my recent trip to Denmark.

This trip was slightly different to any other trip I have been on. Mainly because we flew there ourselves rather than fly via an airline. That, and it was an organised trip, I mean organised in terms of the excursions, timings and dinners etc... The kind I do not normally like, as I prefer to have time to go about and do my own thing.

So the First day was great, 6 am start. Drive to Southend airport and we set off. We flew over the English channel towards Belgian airspace, we could see Dunkerque which was quite interesting. We went on into Dutch airspace and I was disappointed that I did not see any windmills! One interesting fact was that we were in the same airspace as the Red arrows! We heard them over the radio but they were too far away from us to see. Anyway our destination was Emden in Germany, which is quite near the border near Groeningen. It was quite nice at Emden airport and the fuel guy came over on a push bike, which was just a little quirky. We were a bit disappointed though as the cafe was shut and we were quite hungry after a 3 hour(ish) flight. Luckily Martin and I had the foresight to pack a packet of crisps each! No one else did Haha!

I think we stayed there for about an hour an then set off towards Denmark. When we were leaving German airspace Martin and his Dad asked me why the Germans kept on saying "shoes" It turns out they were saying "Tschüs" (Goodbye)  and I was wetting myself with laughter at the typical British ignorance hehehe In Danish airspace we heard a Norwegian and a Swedish plane flying about, and the interesting quirk here was that "bravo" was pronounced "bra-oh". We landed in Roskilde safely without any hitches, the weather was glorious and you can see that in the landing picture I posted above.

Anyway Roskilde was a rather nice city, not that we saw much of it, there was the massive cathedral with all the Danish kings since some certain time. I haven't been around it there wasn't time.

I did have time to go shopping and have a quick go at my mission to get real wool. About an hour haha

Anyway on our visit we went to Copenhagen, and we tried a traditional Smorgasbord, it was ok actually, but there were so many things to try and with 3 courses in less than 1 hour (I had the feeling of being really rushed) I didn't get to try much.

I had some fried Plaice, which I was really enjoying until the waitress took it away and gave me some horrible cheese instead. Also this is my face after trying snaps.

Yeah I don't think I will have that again hehe.

Overall the food was okay, all our meals were chosen for us so we were pretty much thrown in at the deep end and had to try everything. Which was good because we actually got to try proper Danish food. I didn't try the Salmon roe though as I have a really strong urge to puke if I don't like something which can be rather embarrassing in restaurants. 

After this we went on a lovely coastal drive and we could see Sweden! So near yet so far! We drove up almost to Helsingør to a modern art museum called Louisiana. Which was rather interesting. I would show you the pictures but you will have to check my facebook for those as the powers that be on the internet won't allow me to upload them here V.V.

The next day we went to a Viking ship museum which told of the history of the ships that were found at the bottom of Roskilde Fjord, they had some remains of the original ships on display, which was rather awe inspiring.

This was followed by immediate removal to the airport. On the drive to the airport the heavens opened and we were trapped in a rather soggy Denmark. Not that I was complaining :P  After about 2 hours of faffing around at the airport (which is quite tiresome) we returned to Hotel Prindsen and checked in for an extra night.

The next day the oh-so-bothersome thunderstorm had passed and the skies were blue again. We headed for our next destination Texel in the Netherlands. Texel was quite quaint and a bit windswept, but it did really remind me of Canvey Island, I guess my knowledge that the Dutch helped to reclaim most of what we call Canvey today, helped. It's a Frisian island and the only real holiday makers here are the Dutch and Germans, as a result no restaurants had English menus and I had the mammoth task of translating them all. Even so the Dutch seem to think English people get on better with the Dutch language, it was quite annoying to have to reassure them... yes it's fine I do speak German. I know it's rare for English folk to speak foreign languages, but honestly we are not all in the same boat...

(On a side note It has taken me days to write this as I keep having to leave and return because for some reason my brain has disengaged and i keep writing words which are similar but make no sense, like form instead of for? WTF?!?!?! )

Anyway we had a bit of a look at the Island, It was quite rushed we were only there one day! Then we headed off home. Not before Martin managed to tip loads of sand into my orthopaedic cast! Ex foliation to the extreme.