Back to England

(Sorry I am falling behind in blogging, having too much fun - I will attempt to catch up!)

After finishing at the track, we had to make a beeline for the Eurostar.

First we drove through 3 countries. We blasted along the autobahn for the last time, and I'm really going to miss this. Then we crossed briefly through Netherlands, unexpected for us but suddenly the languages on road signs changed again, and we had to obey speed limits. After crusing at 180km/h, slowing to 120km/h seems so boring. About 1/2 an hour later, we crossed into Belgium and before we knew it, we were in Brussels.

We had to drop the rental car off, and did this about 1pm. From there, we went to the Gare du Midi railway station and locked our bags in a locker for the day, actually it didn't seems as risky as it sounds as the lockers are pretty strong and electronically secured.

For the remainder of the day, we walked around Brussels again. Like Germany, shops are closed on Sundays except those serving food, and a few tacky tourist shops. One last time to sample some Belgian Waffles (they are the best!) and some Belgian chocolate beer. We also discovered parts of the city we missed last time including Manneken Pis, an interesting fountain which is much photographed!

Sadly we had to make our way back to Eurostar, for a 7:30pm check in. We were lucky here, our train was the last to leave before Belgium railway workers went on strike. After our train, travellers were advised to delay their journey. We heard on the news that buses replaced Eurostar through to France, adding hours to the journey.

We arrived comfortably in London about 9:30pm, having passed through 5 countries in one day, and headed off to bed after unwinding. It's nice to be able to understand what's on TV even if all they did was talk about the pending UK budget cuts.

Tomorrow, we're off to Salisbury.