Day 19: Bookish Charm

On Tuesday we had a look around Redu. Unfortunately, most of the stores are not open at the beginning of the week so we will look again on Thursday or Friday. We did manage to look inside one store which had a floor of French, a floor or Dutch, and a floor of English books. The old man who owned it was from The Netherlands and spoke all 3 languages. He was quite a character and was happy to tell us stories about how his wife started the International Organisation of Book Towns and about their travels to those towns and the people they met. Apparently there is a book town in Korea with 200 book stores!

'A Book Town is a small rural town or village in which second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated. Most Book Towns have developed in villages of historic interest or of scenic beauty.'

 A house in Redu

We then popped back 'home' for lunch before driving to Bouillon which has one of the oldest castles in Belgium, built in the eighth century.

 Fort of Bouillion

Bridge over River Semois in Bouillion

As the light disappeared, Niels decided to cross over into France, just for the hell of it, before we headed back to our 'home' in Lesse. Our evening consisted of another game of Ludo, dinner, and 2 games of the card game Spite and Malice, which Sarah and Niels taught me, and I won both! They think it was beginners luck but 2 out of 2 is pretty good and I'm hoping to beat them again tonight :D

Crossing the border

Day 18: Road Trip

On Monday we set off on our road trip to the Ardennes. The Ardennes is a mountainous area covered in forests stretching mostly through parts of Belgium and Luxembourg, and some of France. We are staying in a chalet in Lesse, which is the village next to Redu, a book town comprising of 24 book stores for a population of 500. Throughout the week, we will drive around to other villages in the Ardennes before returning to Lokeren on Friday.

 On the road

After some difficultly finding the chalet, we arrived with a wood fire going strong. After settling in, we went in search of a supermarket so we (read: Niels) could make dinner. Lindy and Jules, we also played a game called Ludo, aka 'Dude, don't get annoyed', which is almost identical to Sorry! And guess what, I finally won a game! haha

Day 17: The Art of Procrastination

Sunday, day 17 of my trip. After our very late bedtime the previous night, we ended up not getting up until around midday. Which really, is how a Sunday should be anyway. But with the house in need of a clean up, there was no rest for the wicked. It took Sarah and I two hours to wash and dry the dishes used the night before as they don't have a dishwasher and I have to say, I have never seen my fingers look as pruney as they did that afternoon!

We hung around the house for the rest of the day, doing random stuff and then we tried to pack for our trip to the Ardennes the next day. It all seemed like too much effort so we ate leftover mousse cake and watched a movie called The Art of Getting By, which was good and had a great soundtrack.

Mousse cake and tea :)

Day 16: Reunion Time

On 24th November, Sarah and I caught the train into Brussels to meet up with my cousin Ruth and her friend Kerry. Kerry lives in Brussels so Ruth came from the UK for the weekend to stay with her and to catch up with me. I haven't seen Ruth since I was in the UK 5 years ago when I stayed with her and Kerry.

 Grand Place, Brussels

 

These apartments and shop fronts are built onto the side of a church (the limestone coloured brick on the left is the church).

We only had a couple of hours but we went to a cafe for a drink and then found a creperie where we had savoury and dessert crepes for lunch before Sarah and I caught the train back to Lokeren.

Tasty crepes with Ruth and Kerry

 Occupying ourselves on the train home

That night we had a dinner party as a late celebration for Sarah's birthday. There were 12 of us and Niels made an Indian curry feast and then chocolate mousse layer cake for dessert. Dinner parties here seem to go a lot later than back in Australia as we didn't end up going to bed until after 4am.

Ready for our feast

Day 15: While the sun was sleeping

Day 15. Friday 23rd November. 2:30am. Alarm goes off.

Today we flew back to Belgium. Our 80 minute bus ride to the airport left Stockholm at 3:30am so it turned out to be a very long day.

 Sunrise

Once back in Belgium, Niels picked us up (bringing croissants) around 9am and then we had the 1.5 hour drive back to Lokeren. The question is, are the cheap flights worth all the extra travelling time to the small airports?

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day not doing much. We did washing and sorted through our souvenirs and I caught up on a couple of blog posts since at this point I was behind by six days. We then hung out on the couch for a while before bed, too tired to really do anything.

Day 14: Swedish Rain

Our last day in Sweden saw us trying to get a bunch of stuff done. So we whittled our list down to the place we really wanted to check out and attempted to cover them all. First we went to the area known as Sodermalm. We looked at a few boutique and quirky stores we had heard about and Katerina Kyrka (I have just realised that I think 'Kyrka' means church).

 Katerina Kyrka

We then headed to the cemetery of Skogskyrkogarden, which Lonely Planet recommended to us. It was peaceful and quite pretty but we also now assume they meant it was a sight to see in summer.

 Skogskyrkogarden cemetery

After leaving Skogskyrgogarden, we made a detour back to Gamla Stan as Sarah had discovered a rubber stamp store online that she wanted to check out. It turned out to be a success since we both bought some things.

Gamla Stan, now with added Christmas lights

Finally, we went in search of a few more shops but unfortunately many of the ones we went looking for throughout the day turned out to be a let down or not even there at all. But oh well, what can you do... We also checked out the train stations of the blue line metro because we had been told it had some pretty cool art painted on the walls. This confused us a bit as it just looked like we were underground in caves, which we were...

The blue metro line is surprise surprise, a cave...

With the day feeling a lot like a waste, we finished by getting some touristy souvenirs before heading back to our room to try and pack up all our purchases for our flight the next day. Oh it also ended up raining all day :(

Day 13: Childhood Dreaming

Day 13, the 21st of November for those of you playing at home, saw us heading to Junibacken. Junibacken is a storybook house created by Astrid Lindgren, best known for writing Pippi Longstockings. The house features recreated sets from her books and other Swedish children's authors, as well as a story train which lets your travel through the stories with narration in your chosen language. It's a little hard to explain and unfortunately photos were not allowed on the train ride. But, think of a haunted house ride except instead of scary stuff, you are inside children's books. The house is for made for children and we were pretty sure we were the only adults not accompanied by a child. But we had fun so that is all that mattered!

 One of the rooms with different storybook sets

 Sarah becomes part of the story at Junibacken

Upon leaving Junibacken, we walked past a beautiful building called Nordiska Museet, a museum. It was amazing from all angles, but it was not our next stop.

Nordiska Museet

Next came Skansen, an open-air Swedish museum. Being winter, most of the exhibits were closed but we did get to see the main thing we wanted to, Nordic animals! Goats, seals, moose, bears, lynx, grey owls, bison, wolverines, grey wolves and reindeer.

Baby goats!

Seals

A moose, minus his antlers.

As a one-year old male, they grew as spears and so the staff had to cut them down because they were dangerous to the female moose. Apparently next year they will grow back but in the typical antler way.

The brown bears were so cute!

 The reindeer on their way to get food.

Reindeer are so cool :)

A street inside Skansen

One thing that really annoyed me is that it gets dark around 3:30pm. I found this really hard to get used to and we were constantly thinking we should start thinking where we should go for dinner, even though it was only 4pm. We wondered if this was normal because it seemed no matter what time we headed out to dinner (anywhere between 5 and 8), all the restaurants were full. Either people eat dinner at weird times or they have learnt to stagger their eating so they can get a spot in a restaurant!

Anyway, between daylight disappearing and dinner time, we looked through shops and wandered the streets. We found a really cool window display in the shopping complex NK, which from what we could figure out appeared to be a much bigger type of David Jones.

NK window display

NK window display

Day 12: Old Town

The island of Gamla Stan is Stockholm's 'Old Town' and it is where we chose to spend Tuesday 20th November.

Gamla Stan

Storkyrkan Church and Cathedral

Tyska Kyrkan.

There was no way to get a proper photo of this church as it was 'boxed in' by other buildings.

 Marten Trotzigs Grand is Stockholm's narrowest lane-way at 90cm

Riddarhuset
This was used by the Swedish parliament in the 16th century.

Riddarholmskyrkan

Gamla Stan appeared to be full of churches and I loved the architecture of them (ironic perhaps for someone who does not like religion?). Mostly we wandered the cobblestone streets, peering into windows and occasionally buying something. 

Gamla Stan streets

Kungliga Slottet is a palace with 608 rooms

After finishing up on Gamla Stan, we wandered back through 'our' neighbourhood, searching for stores that had been recommended to us. We also came across St. Jakobs Kyrka and a large ice-skating rink which had people setting up Christmas Markets around it (although unfortunately the markets were not due to open until 2 days after we left Stockholm). For dinner, we decided we would find something on our very long street. This proved harder than we first thought as there either wasn't vegetarian options, the menu's were in Swedish and we couldn't figure out if they were vegetarian, or they were too expensive. Finally after walking the whole street (it spans a large part of our 'island'), we settled on an Asian restaurant back towards our hotel. We were originally judgemental because of it's name but it was really very yummy. It's hard to take a restaurant seriously when it is named Ping Pong.

  St. Jakobs Kyrka. Love the colour!

Day 11: Stockholm Bound

Today was one of those days where the entire day is wasted no matter what you do. We checked out of our hotel at 9am and then went to the airport for our flight to Stockholm.

On our way to Sweden

We didn't arrive in Sweden until after 2pm and then we had an 80minute bus ride to Stockholm (we passed the time by watching tv-shows on our Apple products). 

 On the bus to Stockholm

Once in Stockholm, it took us a little while to find our hotel as we were walking from the bus terminal in the city centre, at peak hour, and I was lugging a massively heavy bag. I'm not quite sure how I managed to forget my promise to myself that I would only ever travel with a suitcase after backpacking for three months 5 years ago (I decided to leave my big suitcase in Belgium and take a smaller bag so that I wouldn't fill up my big one and then have to pay a Ryanair fee for going over 15kg!).

We finally found our 'hotel'; a bunch of rooms and en-suites in the basement of a coffee shop on the main shopping strip of Stockholm. It was a bit odd as the coffee shop staff seemed to run it and while the location was excellent, the rooms, while clean, were far smaller than any of their, or my, pictures let on.

 The extent of our 'hotel' room

Day 10: A Kind of Glitz and Glamour

Sunday, 18th November, was our last full day in Budapest so we cut down our list of things we wanted to do and put them in order of importance and opening times. First off we visited parliament, which we had kept postponing since the first day. The exterior of the building was beautiful and we had read that the interior was too, and it wasn't a lie. It was a stunning building and worth the visit and because Sarah and I are both travelling on Irish and British passports, we were allowed to do the tour for free as it is free for all EU citizens. My British passport finally paid off!

Part of the dome ceiling at parliament

 Another ceiling

 The left side of the front exterior of parliament

The view of parliament from the bridge to Margaret Island (please excuse the fog)

Next we walked to nearby Margaret Island, which is sort of like a smaller version of Central Park. Obviously being autumn/winter, there wasn't quite as much to do there than if it had been summer but as usual, we found plenty of fun could be had with the beautiful autumn leaves.

 On Margaret Island

Next on the list was a visit to the major shopping centre, West End. This ended up being a bit of a waste of time as we were both tired and hot (being indoors in all our layers) and didn't really feel up to it, although we did buy a couple of pieces in the end.

 The Christmas display at West End Shopping Centre

To cheer ourselves up, we stopped by the New York Cafe, which was voted the most beautiful cafe in the world. It really was amazing, with beautiful deserts and drinks. I had a fresh vanilla-apple lemonade and Sarah and some kind of coffee (sorry is that too general for you coffee lovers?). We also shared a plate of selected Hungarian deserts but the real clincher was the decor, it was beautiful.

Inside New York Cafe

We then headed back to the hotel and attempted to pack our bags for Stockholm, but found it too depressing, so instead we went down to the hotel bar and had a couple of cocktails. After getting tipsy way too quickly, we went for our last meal at La Botte before reattempting to pack our luggage, now slightly inebriated.

 Free cocktails are not necessarily a good idea...