Today we have a nice 2 hour drive along the southern coast of England...at least is would be nice if it wasn't raining.  But, as usually, we won't let the rain get in the way of our traveling, so we moved out the the AirBnB and jumped into the car.  Our first stop is Brighton, 1.25 hours away.

We arrived in Brighton around 11 AM.  Even though it was raining and window, we parked and headed to the Brighton Pier.  During the "season" it is glitzy and shiny and bright with amusement rides, carnival games, food stands, restaurants, and arcades.  Because it was a Tuesday morning and rainy and windy, we pretty much had the pier to ourselves with only a few other crazy people walking around.

After walking the pier it was after noon, so we walked into town to find lunch.  I found a place on my phone that is know to have very good sandwiches, Social Board Brighton.  Wow...it was so good.  Tim enjoyed his Philly and I loved my Tempeh sandwich.  You might be like...Tempeh?!?...yuck.  Well, this is the description of the sandwich.  All those different textures and flavors made it one of my favorite sandwiches ever.

Boy...I would love to have another one of those sandwiches right now!

After lunch we walked back to the car and headed out to Beachy Head.  It is only 40 minutes away, but a pleseant drive along the coast with views of chalky, white cliffs.  Beachy Head has the largest of these cliffs called "Seven Sisters" and it was spectacular.

You may be asking...isn't Dover where the white cliffs are?  Why yes, but here in Beachy Head, we knew that we would have  the place pretty much to ourselves instead of dealing with the crowds of Dover.   We are driving to Dover tomorrow, but we might not visit the White Cliffs of Dover since we are now here.

I'm sure it it was sunny, the contrast between the white cliffs and dark sand would be amazing, but it was still quite a site to see. 

There was a visitors center with displays that talked about the formation of the cliffs and how erosion will one day take out the visitor center.  The coast is currently eroding 8 - 10 inches per year.

We are on our way to Canterbury, which is only 2 hours from here, but Rick Steves talks nicely about a town called Rye, exactly between here and Canterbury.

Who doesn't dream of half-timbered pubs?!? So, we decided to stay there for the night.  We arrived at our B&B just after sunset.  We walked around town a bit, stopped at an Italian restaurant and shared a pizza and some pasta, then looked for a half-timbered pub.  We found a pub called Rye Waterworks Micropub, and what a find!  They had about 8 local cask beers with the casks visible from the bar:

We had a couple of these cask beers and then switched to trying some of the local ciders they offered.  I think one of the ciders I had was 12% ABV!  Here is a cool photo (borrowed from their website) of the ciders:

After all that beer and cider, I had to use the bathroom:

Pretty cool that it flushes like you are pouring cask ale!  After a few hours of hanging out at this awesome pub, we walked back to the B&B and called it a night.  Tomorrow we head to Canterbury for 2 night with a stopover in Dover.  Until then...

We left the B&B just after 10 AM and drove towards Portsmouth were we are going to check out the Historic Dockyard.  As we were driving, the road starting looking familiar and then we realized that we were driving right past Stonehenge.  Yes, you can see if from the side of the road.  Tim was able to get a pretty good video as we drove right by.

We arrived in Portsmouth, checked into our AirBnB, and walked to the Historic Dockyard which was a pleasant 30 minute walk.  There is much to see here, but since it is already after 2 PM, we only have time for one sight...the Mary Rose Museum. 

The Mary Rose Is a 16th-century warship that sunk 2 miles off the English coast in July 1545 killing about 370 sailors.  She was located 1971, and in 1982, after 437 years underwater, the ship was raised.  The ship we saw in the museum is the remains of the Mary Rose after 35 years of conservation.

Before visiting this museum, I have never heard of it before and wasn't totally interested.  Tim had seen a show on PBS about it, so was excited to see it.  Needless to say, when seeing the ship along with all the displays of all sorts of items found inside the wreck, I couldn't get enough.  Here are some highlight photos of the Mary Rose Museum.

Lot of longbows were found inside the wreck:

By the way...here is a model on display of what the Mary Rose looked like:

We wound up visiting the museum until they kicked us out at 5 PM, almost 3 hours after arriving.

On the walk back to the AirBnB, we stopped at the Brewhouse & Kitchen.  This is a small chain that we have been to before, but each location has a few local brews that they make, so we had a flight:

We then returned to the AirBnB and looked forward to tomorrow when we get to see some more of the Historic Dockyard.

We woke up, had breakfast, and headed back to the Historic Dockyard.  There are multiple ships here that we can tour including the HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, and HMS M.33.  First stop, HMS Warrior.

The HMS Warrior was the first ironclad warship and was built in 1860.  Interestingly, HMS Warrior was never in a battle since its very existence was sufficient to keep peace since the enemy knew it was unbeatable.

There were tour guides in character throughout the ship.  This guy told us what it was like to be a fireman, the guy that shoveled coal into the furnaces. 

Next stop, the HMS Victory, the historic warship captained by Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson during England's victory over Napoleon's feet in the Trafalgar campaign in 1805.  Unfortunately, Admiral Nelson was hit by a sniper bullet and died onboard.

It is kind of cool how the ship is dry docked:

The plaque on the deck says "HERE NESON FELL 21st Oct 1805."

This is the spot where Nelson actually died.

Next is HMS M.33, a M29-class monitor built in 1919 and is one of only three surviving Royal Navy warships of WWI and the only surviving ship form the Gallipoli Campaign.  By the way....the modern looking aircraft carrier in the background is the soon to be commissioned HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier...more to come later.

We did go inside this ship, but it wasn't very exciting, although they did have a multimedia presentation about teh Gallipoli Campaign which was very interesting.

After walking around three ships on land, it is time to take the water tour on the Solent Cat.  The tour was about 1 hour and took us up and down Portsmouth Harbor passing the Portsmouth Naval Base.

This is Spinnaker Tower.  It was originally called Portsmouth Millennium Tower, but due to delays the construction didn't begin until 2001 and was completed in 2005.

The HMS Prince of Wales was commissioned on 10 December 2019, just 15 days after we took these photos.

This is the HMS Bristol, a Type 82 destroyer commissioned in 1973.  It served in the Falklands War and now serves as a training ship.

Other random photos taken during the harbor tour:

We returned to the dockyard and continued our walk around the area.  We took a quick peek inside the Making of a Royal Marine Commando exhibit and thought we were done, so we headed towards the exit.  But then we came across Boathouse 4, so we went in to check it out.

Boathouse 4 is a working Boatbuilding Skills Training Center where historic boats are restored as well as it being the home to the International Boatbuilding College Portsmouth and Highbury College.  Tim was quite enthralled by this building.  Here are some of his photos:

I was so done by this time and had to drag Tim out of the building kicking and screaming.  For dinner we went back to the Brewhouse & Kitchen since tonight was buy-one-burger-get-one-free night.  We then returned to the AirBnB.  Tomorrow we drive to Rye with a couple of fun stops along the way.  Until then...

It is a 3 hour drive to Glastonbury, so we got a fairly early start and drove the 170 miles, arriving around 12:30 PM.  We are staying in Wells tonight, but we are stopping in Glastonbury on the way. 

First stop is the Glastonbury Abbey, the first Christian sanctuary in the British Isles.  This site has been a sacred site for hundreds of years starting with the druids.  In the 1st century, Joseph of Arimathea (the man who was responsible for burying Jesus), supposedly visited here and built a small church, making this the leading Christian pilgrimage site in all of Britain.

In 1184 there was a devastating fire bringing the pilgrimage to a halt.  In 1191, the abbot "discovered," with the help of a divine dream, the tomb and bodies of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, bringing the pilgrims back...along with all their money.

In 1539, King Henry VIII destroyed all abbeys leading to the ruins we are seeing today.

A guided tour is included in the admission price, so we ate our sandwiches we bought at a convenience store, while waiting for the tour to begin.  Lucky us, we were the only ones on the tour.  The tour guide dressed up as a pilgrim from the 12th century which was pretty cool, although Tim only got a photo of here back:

Here are some photos from our visit:

And of course, the site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's tomb:

After the Abby, we walked through town.  This town is full of shops selling crystals due to the druid connection mentioned above and also because of hippies visiting the springs filled with healing water.  There are also many music and art shops due to the famous Glastonbury music and art festival held nearby.  Our first goal on this walk is to find, and taste the healing waters of the Red and White Springs.  After about 20 minutes we found them, right across from each other.  Here I am tasting the Red Spring water.  It was actually pretty good.

Across from the Red Spring is the White Spring which you can bathe in by entering this strange building:

Inside it was candlelit with shrines, antlers, crystals, and naked hippie-like people showering under cold water or soaking in cold water pools.  This is taken from their website.

After getting our fill..and no, we didn't go into the water...I filled up my water bottle with White Spring water, which tasted better than the Red Spring water.  We then headed to Glastonbury Tor to hike to the top.  We are hiking to the tower in this photo.  It doesn't look too bad.

Did I say it doesn't look too bad?  Well, the walk was much steeper than anticipated.  This is looking down from almost the top:

Ah....made it.  The view was well worth the walk.

We started our hike down and decided to stop for a snack at a conveniently located bench.

It was now almost 3 PM, so we finished our snack and headed down the hill, through town, and back to our car (stopping for an awesome brownie at a bakery in town.)

Oh yeah...I forget to show you a photo of the Chalice Well Garden.  Behind this building is a well that Joseph of Arimathea (you learned about him above) dropped the chalice from the Last Supper into.  We didn't see it fitting to pay £4.50, so all you get is a photo of the building.

We were only 15 minutes from Wells, so arrived in town, parked, and walked to the Wells Cathedral.  We arrived there in time to walk around a little bit and take a few photos before they announced that the cathedral was closing unless you were staying for Evensong Service, so we stayed.  I do like listening to the organ playing with the boys choir singing.

Here are some photos of the cathedral.  It is England's first completely Gothic cathedral dating from around 1200.

Check out the figure-eight "scissor arches'...pretty cool.  I don't think we have seen this before.

Evensong ended at 6PM, so we were greeted with a lit-up church when we exited.

Wells was lit up for the season:

Our B&B is not actually in Bath, so we returned to the car and drove the 10 minutes.  As we checked in, the owners made a reservation for us the closest restaurant, The Pheasant.  We had a glass of wine in the room and walked 10 minutes to the restaurant.  We had a nice dinner and some beer and returned to the B&B.  Tomorrow we head to Portmouth for a 2 night stay.  Until then...

We are driving to Penzance today.  It is 100 miles away, so it should take about 2.5 hours.  Luckily there is a neolithic site we will stop at to break the drive up a bit.

We left the AirBnB and drove to Scorhill Stone Circle, just outside of Gidleigh, England.  We arrived into town and drove up a narrow road that ended in a parking area.  We entered the gate and walked uphill about 15 minutes and was rewarded with a great view of the Dartmoor moors.

When we went over the rise, Scorhill Stone Circle was in view:

Here is a zoomed in look:

Standing in the circle:

As a bonus, just a short hike away is a clapper bridge, so off we went.

Tim's fingers taking a walk:

Great action shot Tim:

OK...enough of this.  Time to hike back to the car and drive to Penzance...if these cows get out of our way!

We arrived in Penzance around 2 PM, checked into the AirBnB and then went out for a walk.  Here is a photo of our neighborhood.  It is a bit stormy out here.

We walked around town a bit and found Cornish Crown Brewery just a few blocks from our AirBnB, so of course we had to stop for a flight:

It was starting to rain, so we headed back to the AirBnB hoping for some better weather for tomorrow for our driving tour of the Penwith Peninsula which Penzance is a part of.

We awoke to stormy weather so slept in some, had breakfast, and waited for the rain to slow down.  When it finally did, we headed to the car to explore the Penwith Peninsula.  First stop is a small village could Mousehole.  We parked and walked down to the walking path along the English Channel.

This is a cute town.  I could just imagine it with blue skies:

Well look...The Ship Inn looks interesting. It is a St Austell Brewery inn which isn't actually a brewery, but since they had 4 different St. Austell beers on tap, we decided to order a flight:

Here is a nice Cornish toast:

We walked back to the car along the path along the water and enjoyed the scenery.

Back to the car and onward to continue our Penwith Peninsula tour.  These Hedgerows are an icon of Cornwall and aren't as soft as they appear.  There are rock walls behind that greenery making for a "fun" drive.  And yes...this is a two way road.

More crazy, narrow roads through Lamorna Cove.

Check it out...Lands End is only 7.5 miles away.  Going there will complete our end-to-end tour of the UK, but first we have a few more stops.

We continued for about 1 mile and pulled off to the side of the road to visit Merry Maidens Stone Circle.

What a nice circle, especially since we had it to ourselves.  About a half-mile beyond Merry Maidens is a Celtic Cross which marked the way for Celtic pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela during the 6th to 10th century..

Rick Steves mentions a tiny road leading to a secret cove called Penherth Cove.  We had to go check it out, so we made a left.  This was really a tiny road, and again, it IS two-way.

We arrived to a sign that said visitors weren't allowed past, so we parked on the side of the road and walked the rest of the way to the cove.

This contraption is to help pull the fishing boats out of the water and onto the slipway.

Cool stone buildings on the cove.

This is the South West Coast Path and travels 630 miles along the entire coastline of the Penwith Peninsula...maybe one day we will walk the path, but for today we just walked up to a nice viewpoint.

We returned to the car, drove back up that tiny, narrow road and made it back to the main road.  Next stop Land's End, the westernmost point in all of England and is now a tourist trap with a pricey parking lot.  All we wanted was a photo of the sign, so instead of paying for parking, we took turns leaving the car an getting the obligatory photo.

That is us...the little blue dot on the map.  By the way...I am as close as you can get to the sign without having to pay.  We were in John O'Groats on 21 September, exactly 2 months ago today.

It is now after 3 PM, so we decided to head back to Penzance and finish this driving tour tomorrow.  We stopped at a Lidl and bought some food for dinner and headed back to the AirBnB for a relaxing evening.

We woke to another rainy day, but it won't stop us from exploring the rest of the Penwith Peninsula.  Right at 11 AM we arrived at Cape Corwall AKA "The Connoisseur's Land's End" because it feels like the end of the world without all the touristy gimmicks of the actual Land's End.  We parked in the parking lot and walked to the top of the bluff.  On the way, we passed the ruins of the tiny 6th-century church of St. Helen's Oratory.

We are headed up to that chimney.

Made it...and check out the views:

We walked back to the car a bit soggy from the rain, but still not letting it stop us. Next stop is the Crown Mines of Botallack.  The 1860's were the hayday for these tin mines.  We found a visitor center and talked to the park ranger for a bit as she explained that the mines went down the cliffs and under the Atlantic.  The Geevor Tin Mine in this area extended a half-mile under the ocean.  See this drawing that Tim took a photo of.  All those mine levels are under the ocean...pretty cool.

Here are some photos of mine ruins

Back to the car for a scenic drive to St. Ives through, as Rick Steves put it, "mining towns, farm hamlets, and pastoral fields." Here is a  white-belted Galloway cow along the side of the road and the "pastoral fields."

We made it to St. Ives just before 3 PM and guess what.  There is a brewery here not surprising called St. Ives Brewery.  There were no beers on tap, so we bought one bottle of each of their beers.

After the flight, we were ready to get back to the AirBnB and dry out.   We arrived at the AirBnB right around dinner time, had some dinner, did laundry, and called it a night.  Tomorrow we have a 3.5 hour drive to Wells, England.  Until then...

Today we are doing "Dartmoor Driving Tour" in Rick Steves' England guidebook.  FIrst stop is in an area called "The Moors".  A moor is land with a relative lack of vegetation except for high grasses and heather.  This area has long views of undulating expanses of open land without trees, but is littered with prehistoric stone monuments.

Our first stop is to hike up to a stone monument called "Grimspound."  We parked on the side of the road and hiked up a hill to the monument.  Here are some nice "view" photos:

Below us is Grimspound (see the circle of rocks):

Gruimspond dates from 2000 BCE and is a late-Bronze Age fortress used as a settlement for 800 years.  The inner stone circles, like the one I am sitting on below, would have been stone huts.

We returned to the car to continue the driving tour.  We passed these cool cows on the side of the road along with a celtic cross.  These celtic crosses are found all along the road and marked the way for villagers to cross the moor, often for funeral processions.

Further down the road is the village of Postbridge, and has a very cool and very old bridge called a clapper bridge that dates back to the Middle Ages.

It was about noon and we were hungry so we stopped in the next town, Widecombe-in-the-Moor.  This was a very small town with a cute church.  Luckily there was a gift shop that sold pasties.

This image of many people on the back of a gray mare appears all over town.  Notice the city sign above as well.  The image comes from a popular folk song called Widecombe Fair about a a man called Tom Pearce, whose horse dies after someone borrows it to travel the the fair in Widecombe with his friends, making 8 people aboard this poor mare...no wonder it died.

Back to the car with the next stop being Haytor, one of many bare granite peaks that poke out of the moor landscape.  While climbing up to it, I located a geocache.  Tim says that I am way to motivated to get to these hidden canisters.

After about 15 minute hike up hill, we came to the granite peaks.  Wait...this doesn't match the photo in the guide book!  Oops...wrong granite peaks.  These wound up being called Saddle Tor.

Back to the car, and around the next bend we saw Haytor.

Less than a 10 minute walk up the hill and we arrive:

What a great view from up here.

Back on the road to the last stop on our driving tour, Hound Tor. Named Hound Tor because the rocks look resemble heads of dogs.  This clump of rocks are supposedly the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes story "The Hound of Baskervilles."

We were supposed to climb up these rocks, but it was past 2:30 PM and we want to get back to our AirBnB and tour the town of Chagford, so we stopped in the parking lot, took a photo, and headed back to Chagford.

We returned to Chagford, parked the car, walked to the AirBnB, and then headed out for our town walk.  There was a brochure in the AirBnB with a Chagford walking tour.  It was already 4 PM, so we didn't have much daylight left, but off we went.

We must have stood here for 10 minutes watching them replace the thatch roof on this building.  It was very interesting to watch them work.

Here is St. Michael the Archangel's Church built in the 1400's.

We exited the church at 4:45 PM and just like that, it is dark.

We returned to the AirBnB, had bread, cheese, and jam in front of the fireplace.  Tomorrow we head to Penzance, a 5.5 hour drive, so we want to get an early start.

The alarm went off at 7 AM because we plan on being at Salisbury Cathedral by 9 AM and wanted to eat breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast and just happens to be where we stayed last night...Wetherspoon.  After breakfast, we headed straight to the Cathedral.

Salisbury Cathedral was completed in 1258.  It is a beautiful place that holds one of the original copies of the Magna Carta.

The cloister is beautiful.

The Magna Carta is inside that booth.  The Magna Carta, dating to 1215, is to England what the Constitution is to the United States.  This is one of four orignal Magna Carta's that exist. The one here is know to be the best preserved.  Of the other three, one is in Lincoln Castle and two are in the British Library in London.

No photographs are allowed of the Magna Carta, but here is what it looks like:

After this live history show we walked back to the car via another historic site.  I am standing in the exact location where on 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the UK's intelligence services, and his daughter Yulia Skripal were poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.  Both survived, but this led to the British government accusing Russia of attempted murder and announced a series of punitive measures against Russia, including the expulsion of diplomats, on the 14 March.

We returned to the car and headed to a bucket list location...Stonehenge.  We arrived around 11 AM, skipped the museum for now, and headed straight to the stones.  From the visitor center you can walk the 1.25 miles, or take the bus.  We decided to take the bus since we are trying to beat the afternoon crowd.

Stonehenge is believed to have been built between 3000 and 1500 BCE and used as a cremation cemetary, and functions as a celestial calendar.

When you arrive at the formation, you walk clockwise around the stones while listening to an audio tour.  We took over 50 photos but here are a few of the better ones.

This is the "heel stone" which lines up the sun and the alter in the center of the stone formation.

This is a Station Stone.  There used to be 4 of these stones marking the corners of a rectangle.  Now 2 of these survive.

After spending about 50 minutes walking around and contemplating Stonehenge, we headed back to the bus.  We decided to get off at the halfway point and walk around some more of the standing stones in the area.  It took us about 30 minutes to walk back to the museum and took a walk around.  At this point there were bunches of children, so we quickly checked out the exhibit.

Here is a skeleton they found on the grounds.  He was excavated in 1864 and is believed to have died between 3630 and 3360 BCE.  I love when they extrapolate a face on the skull.

We went to the cafeteria and had pasties for lunch which were pretty good.  We then headed to Chagford, 2 hours east, where we are spending the next 2 nights.  It took us a bit to find the house since the road is under construction, but we finally found it.  Tim loved that it had a wood burning fireplace.

Tomorrow we are doing a driving tour around Darmoor National Park.  It is a pretty long drive with some hiking so we want to get an early start.  Until then...

Our train back to London is before 9 AM, so we have to leave our AirBnB by 7 AM.  The alarm went off at 5:30 AM...oy...so early.  We got up, packed, and made it out of the house right at 7 AM.  We walked to the train station and arrive at 7:30 AM.  We bought a couple of sandwiches for the train, went through security, and got our 6 month Visa from the United Kingdom which was the main reason we did this trip to Brussels.

We boarded the train on time at 9 AM and were in London 2 hours later.  This time we are in London for only the time it takes for us to walk to the car rental office and get out of town.  Don't worry...we will be back in London soon with plenty of time to spend here.

We got the rental car and headed to the Avebury Stone Circle, a 2 hour drive away.  We arrived in Avebury just before 1:30 PM.  Avebury Stone Circle, built  4000 - 5000 years ago, is the largest stone circle in the world with a diameter of 1,088 feet.  It has 2 inner stone circles.

There is also an earthwork henge (a circular ditch) that has a diameter of 4,560 feet that runs around the outside of the stone circle.  earthwork henge can be see in the photo below to the left of the dirt path.  It looks like a natural ditch in this photo, but it is man-made.

Close to the Avery Stone Circle is The Avenue, a double row of stones.

Tim and I walked down The Avenue and then hiked up the other side and arrived to Silbury Hill.  It is a 129 foot high artificial chalk mound that is more than 4,000 years old. it is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world.  I found this interesting analysis on Wikipedia:  "Archaeologists calculate that it took 18 million man-hours, equivalent to 500 men working for 15 years to deposit and shape 248,000 cubic metres (324,000 cu yd) of earth and fill."  Wow...incredible.

We returned to the car and had a 1 hour drive to our overnight town of Salisbury.  Tonight we are staying in a Wetherspoon hotel, the same Wetherspoon as the restaurant with awesome beer and drink prices that we have gone to multiple times during our travel.

We checked into our room that was actually really nice and relaxed for a bit before heading across the street for dinner.  We decided to try a different restaurant other than Wetherspoon tonight.  The dinner wasn't the best, but it was inexpensive and hit the spot.  We then returned to the room, watched some TV, did some blogging, and then went to sleep.  Tomorrow we plan on touring a church here in town before hitting the road and visiting Stonehenge.  The church opens at 9 AM, so we want to be there around that time.  We want to eat breakfast before visiting the church, so the alarm is set for 7 AM.

Thursday, 14 November 2019
We arrived at the train station before 9:30 AM since we didn't know what to expect.  We bought breakfast and went through security which was pretty much just metal detectors.  Unlike flying, there are little restrictions to what you can carry on board, so liquids are fine and we didn't have to take our electronics from the bags.

We finally were allowed to board the train, so we found our seats and enjoyed the two hour train ride from London to Brussels.  I know this shot is blurry, but it was the only photo we took on the train.  It was taken while we were in the Chunnel though.

We arrived in Brussels and had a bit of a walk to get to our AirBnB.  The guy is supposed to meet us there, but said that he was running late.   That's OK...the walk is longer than I anticipated.  With our bags, it took us over 20 minutes to arrive, but the guy still wasn't there.  He finally showed after about 15 minutes and apologized and said he had to go to the doctor because of a strange growth on his arm...hum.  We went upstairs and he told us that he also didn't get a chance to clean the apartment because of having to go the the doctor.  Needless to say, we weren't very happy, but there is a good beer bar just down the street where we could go to while he cleaned.

As we were walking to the bar, after only about 10 minutes after leaving the apartment, he texted me to tell me the apartment was ready.  Hum...that was way to fast for the place to actually be clean.  I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but Tim was wanting to catch him and question him in the apartment over cleanliness, so we returned to the apartment, but he was already gone.  This was one of very few times we considered contacting AirBnB and saying that we were not satisfied with the place we were in.  We inspected the apartment and it really was pretty clean.  I could tell that he did change out the sheets and towels, so we went with it, although not very happy.

Now back to that beer bar.  As you can see, even the great beer did not satisfy us since we were still a bit upset with the housing situation.

OK...time to find some mussels for dinner.  I found a few places on my phone, but decided to return to the place we went 2 years ago during our first trip to Brussels.  It was a good as we remembered it.

After dinner, we walked around a little and then returned to the apartment for the night.

Friday, 15 November 2019
Today we slept in walked around a little bit.  During our walk we managed to find 2 breweries:

After a day of walking around, eating, and drinking Belgium beer, we returned to the apartment to relax.

Saturday, 16 November 2019
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIMMY!  To start the big celebration, we returned to Brasserie Cantillon, one of the top breweries in the world that brew lambic (sour) beers.  The last time we were in Brussels, we did the tour.  Today, we are going straight to the tasting room.  You can not buy this beer in the United States, so we plan on drinking till we are full.

We had a couple of glasses of beer that they sold by the glass, and then we bought a bottle of Fou' Foune, an apricot lambic.  This place is just amazing. 

After a couple of hours, we headed to the main square.

Tim wanted a Belgium waffle.  It is his birthday, so he got what he wanted.  This photo is as he is watching the dude make it.  Unfortunately, we were so excited to get and eat it, that we didn't get a photo of the waffle.

It is now about 4:30 PM and we have about 2 hours till our 6:30 PM dinner reservation, so how about another beer.  Well...not just any beer, but a beer from Delirium...you know, the beer with the elephant on the label.  The place is crazy busy, but we found a fairly quiet corner upstairs to enjoy this delicious brew.

Tim just can't get enough of the Manneken Pis AKA Pissing Boy fountain:

Big Wheel in Place Poelaert.

FInally...time for Tim's birthday dinner.  I made a reservation at Le Bistro - Porte de Hal.  It has good reviews and it takes reservations.  We started with some good Belgium beer and shared a pot of mussels for an appetizer.  I had fish and Tim had steak for dinner.

Oh...here is the view out the window from our table.  It is Halle Gate, a medieval fortified city gate.

After a nice dinner and a couple of great beers, we walked back to the apartment.  Tomorrow we return to London.  The train leaves just before 9 AM, so it will be an early morning.

I forgot to mention that when we checked into the hotel in Liverpool yesterday they said that they were upgrading us to a bigger room.  I'm pretty sure that even though the room was bigger, it wasn't an upgrade because the room was right on the main street and there was crazy noise all night.  Drunks yelling at all hours of the night, recycling trucks sucking up glass from a bin (or at least that is what it sounded like), a garbage truck later on in the morning, lots of noise.

Anyway, I didn't sleep well, but the noise didn't even seems to bother Tim at all.  The good news is that the only plan today is to take a train to London.  Our train is at 11:47 AM, so we were able to sleep in a little bit which was nice.  Around 10 AM we headed out to find breakfast and sandwiches to take on the train.  We returned to the room, checked out, and walked the 5 minutes to the station.

We are traveling on Virgin Railway for a 2 hour train ride to London.  We boarded the train at 11:25 AM.  This train is pretty nice.  The ride is very smooth even traveling over 130 miles per hour...wow.

We arrived in London right on time at 2 PM.  The hotel I found by the train station allows check-in starting at 2 PM, so we headed straight to the hotel and went up to our room.  We chilled out for a couple of hours and then headed out.  Of course we found a brewery, so we had a flight.

I found another brewery about 20 minutes away, so we finished up the flight and headed to it.  When we arrived there was a private party, so we couldn't get in.  So, we headed back to the hotel room.  We are only here in London for 1 night.  Tomorrow we catch a train to Brussels. 

Why are we going to Brussels?  Well, we have a bit of a Visa issue.  When we landed in Ireland we received a 3 month Visa which should of been fine since we were only going to be there for 30 days and then headed to the United Kingdom where they should give us a 6 month Visa.  The problem was that when we traveled to the UK we did go though immigration since there is an open border between Ireland and the UK.  Because of this open border, the UK and Ireland have an agreement that they would each accept the other countries Visa.  So, if we landed in the UK first, then we would have a 6 month Visa, but because we landed in Ireland first, we have a 3 month Visa.  Anyway...we are staying over here for 4 months and we have a 3 month Visa.  To get a new Visa, we have to travel outside of the UK.  The good news is that it is giving us the opportunity to travel though the Chunnel by train.  The easiest trains rides is to Paris or Brussels.  We were just in Paris a year ago, so we decided to travel to Brussels and spend a few days drinking Belgium beer and eating mussels.

Our train tomorrow is at 11 AM, but since it is an international trip we think we should show up at 9:30 AM to get though security and immigration.  We got back to the room before 6 PM so we watched TV and enjoyed our first night in London.

We woke up early since we have to drive get to Liverpool before noon to return the rental car.  We went down for breakfast at 8:30 AM an was ready to leave 1 hour later.  Leaving at 9:30 AM should be plenty of time to arrive in Liverpool before noon since we should only have a 2 hour drive.  However, as luck has it, there seems to be an accident and Google maps is saying we will arrive right at noon.  With other unexpected things, plus we need to get gas now and top up before returning the car, things look bleak.  All we can do is just go, so that is what we did.

When we got to the traffic jam, things seemed to be clearing up some.  We were stuck in traffic for about 20 minutes and somehow managed to pull into the rental car place around 11:45 AM.  We returned the car, but had nowhere to go until 3 PM since that is when we can check into our hotel.  I remembered that when we were here last time we went to a place that had pretty good food and a very good beer list, so we headed there.  It was about a 25 minute walk.

Head of Steam was a good choice.  We sat in a nice large booth that let us sore all our bags without them being in the way.  We had lunch and a couple of pints and before we knew it, it was 3 PM and we could check into our hotel.

The hotel was just a 5 minute walk.  We checked in and thought we would relax for a while and then go back out, however, we never left the hotel room.  Tomorrow we have a train to catch to London.  The train isn't until 11 AM, but since it is an international trip we thought we should show up at 9:30 AM..  Not too bad, especially since we are in for the night at 3 PM.