Netherlands to Belgium

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The. Air. Bed. Has. To. Go........ Seth has a travel bed, a seemingly great invention, an air bed which has a built in sleeping bag for little guys and girls. It's a terrible terrible invention. Seth slept like a log. We didn't sleep at all. Every time he rolled over the polyester rustled and the air bed squeaked. He rolled off it and almost under our bed at least 3 times and oh the noise.... The noise..... So, it will be on e Bay next week if anyone is interested? As a result getting going was like wading through treacle on roller skates. We (I) almost forgot the passports, we (I) realised nearly too late that it's impossible to drag a suitcase whilst carrying 2 mugs of very hot tea and we (I) accidentally booked with an old card so had a phone call a few hours later to ask for payment! Whoops. We got to Bruges in decent time despite the sat nav"s best intentions and enjoyed a masked walk round to get chocolate. The Netherlands has almost no mask wearing, Belgium has a lot and everyone is compliant as they, rightly, see it as their social duty. You are allowed to take it off to drink or have an ice cream though which seemed like a great post lunch idea. It was not a good idea.... 1) as soon as we sat to eat it, it started raining 2) the instant they were out of the shop they melted quicker than anything ever has 3)Seth does not understand the concept of licking the melty bit first 4) Ash got covered in melting ice cream whilst I looked for a 'stable door after horse had bolted' wipe for Seth (and I mean covered) 5) it was still raining 6) Seth decided half way through to go from the bottom up and ended up eating a large amount of his yellow ice cream out of my hand life the afiremwntioned horse. Just as well it was a very nice ice cream! Stickiness cleaned we avoided the wasps, the sun came back and we got back to the car. My track record of pepsi smashing on the floor of past holidays was maintained as a can rolled out of the boot and soaked me, the boot, the case etc as it sprayed over half of Brugge. When we got to the hotel I took my bag of chocolate goodies out of the car and we checked in. It was only when I went back out to the car I realised that although I'd taken the chocolates out of the car I hadn't actually taken them in with me and there they were, sat next to the my door, all sad and lonely. Safe to say we really didn't get enough sleep last night! A lovely day all in all despite the sleepiness induced faux pas! Tomorrow, France

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