Day 2: Bruges to Genk

After last night’s late arrival in Bruges, I was able to have a lie in this morning. I got up at 8 and went for breakfast at 08:30: Bacon, egg and beans to start the day!

I checked out of the hotel and took the short bus ride in to the City Centre. It was pouring with rain when I got on the bus but the rain had stopped by the time I reached the City Centre.

The weather was like that the whole day: Raining one minute, warm and Sunny the next. I was constantly putting a coat on, then taking it off, then taking my jumper off, then putting layers back on! What fun!

Once off the bus I walked to the Market Square and sat outdoors in one of the many cafés/tea rooms on the square. Lunch (a baguette) and a chocolate milkshake. That made up for yesterday evening’s traffic.

I returned on the bus to my car, which I’d left at the hotel – it was almost 3 by the time I left Bruges. It was a 1 hour drive to my pit-stop: The Botanical Garden of Meise. This was mostly on the Autosnelweg A10 but also on the R0 (Ring Brussel) – Brussels’ version of the M25.

I had a good hour and a half wandering around the Botanical Garden, taking plenty of photos along the way. It was much bigger than I first realised though and I could easily have spent much longer there, had it not been closing time at 17:30.

I left at closing time, and got back in to the car: From Meise it was another 1 hour drive – including more time on the R0 – to my second overnight stop in Genk, near the Dutch border.

Its quite a posh hotel – the restaurant certainly is a posh one – so I stuck to the bar and just had a massive spaghetti bolognese, for a fraction of the price of the starters in the restaurant. I then retired to my room to watch Eurovision.

So: Tomorrow I will enter Germany; after a short drive on the motorway through the remainder of Belgium and then in to the Netherlands for a short amount of time, I will be on the German Autobahn.

It will also be Sunday – so most HGVs won’t be on the Autobahns of Germany. If traffic isn’t too bad, I might be able to put my foot down once I get to a section of Autobahn with no speed limt. Or, alternatively, it will pour with rain, there’ll be loads of traffic, and I’ll have to drive to the conditions. Who knows!?

Goede nacht.

FH.

Today’s Milage: 129 Miles
Accumulative Milage: 371 Miles