Belgian Lattes

As is tradition when I go away, I have to find a Starbucks. There are several reasons for this, firstly I collect the Starbucks city mugs, I now have about 20; foreign Starbucks menus are often different, so I want to sample it. This was no exception - a White Chocolate Cranberry Mocha, sickly and
delicious. And finally, if I do not regularly consume Starbucks, I may die and they may go out of business!!!

But who am I kidding, this was probably the only non-alcoholic beverage we had, could not resist the beautiful beer and the amaretto in mulled wine!!!!

Belgian Loveliness

For the last few years, my best friend and I have wanted to go to Belgium. We both love beer, we both love chocolate, we both love Christmas Markets and we finally got our backsides into gear this year and booked it.

We went on the Eurostar, leaving St Pancras, I think I may have mentioned this, but its my most favourite train station, which I enjoyed even more when we arrived early one December morning and enjoyed a champagne breakfast before boarding our train to the continent.

We spent a night in Bruges, I've always wanted to go since seeing the film. It was such a pretty little place. We discovered Rose Hoegaarden, Fajita flavour Doritos, that adding amaretto to anything is amazing (mulled wine, hot chocolate, coffee) and that walking 366 steps up a spiral staircase when other tourists are coming down is tricky, but I'm sure you'll agree from the pic below that it was well worth it!!!

We then boarded a train back to Brussels and spent two nights here. It was much bigger than I had expected and we took it so leisurely that we missed loads of things out, including the iceskating! My friend was desperate to go, but neither of us are the most graceful and I anticipated one of us would be returning home with a broken ankle.

We had a fabulous continental breakfast with the best waiter ever in the cutest cafe. I also ate moules marinare, and I could still taste the garlic from this three days later, it was toxic!!! There was a fabulous light show to music in the Grand Place at night and the top photo is of this, it was spectacular!

Loved Belgium and loved going with my friend, which is just as well as we're off to New York together in April!!!

November Loveliness

Its been forever since I blogged, which is exactly what I'd thought I'd do when I started this, but feels a big lonely blogging when you don't know if anyone is listening...though I did get my first follower recently, thanks Fi.


So to bring you up to speed, here's November's loveliness: The boy and I went to Dunham Massey. Its a National Trust place and an excuse to use our passes. It was wonderful, I had a very yummy sandwich before a walk around the park. There are deer on the land and one seemed to get a bit lost from his friends. Absolutely stunning. I love deer and Bambi was the first film I ever saw at the Cinema.





Talking of which, November saw Breaking Dawn come out. I love Twilight and this was not disappointing, I went two days in a row and loved it! I will be very sad when the last one comes out next year. It may be time to read the books again.

I had a weekend to myself which I spent driving around Shropshire and exploring, it was fabulous and I feel so lucky living in such a beautiful place, Shropshire that is, cannot say the same for Telford!

I also fell in love with BBC's Frozen Planet, especially the penguins. The funniest clip had to be when there was one penguin stealing the rocks from the nest of another...YouTube it! David Attenborough got a lot of stick because they filmed a scene in the zoo, but it was suggested that it was filmed in the natural environment, but regardless of that, the programme was phenomenal, and I really don't know how they do it!

And my final bit of November loveliness was a series of anniversaries. In November 2001, I moved into halls of residence; I'd had a difficult start to university life in September 2001 and was lucky enough to move. It was a bit of a shock, there was 12 of us sharing our floor and one huge kitchen! They were very welcoming and from this large group there was a smaller group that formed and we are still all friends today, we meet when we can and its lovely still being in each others lives 10 years on, and watching the wedding and meeting the babies, celebrating the mortgages, jobs and engagements.

On 25th November it was a year since my OT graduation (I've been to uni twice), it took me some time to get a qualified position after this, which was depressing and demoralising, but I've managed it and loved the challenges I face each day and learning different health conditions and looking for ways to overcome people's everyday difficulties. It was also 11years since the Boy and I met...we spent about 3years apart in this time but came back together. We worked together but never spoke...mainly because I was pissed off that he scuffed my new shoes with a clothing rail. But he rescued me when I was on the most horrific set up date of my life! I knew it was special when he rang me on his mobile the next day and we spoke for 2 hours (that was a big deal 11years ago and his phone bill must have been huge).

That's November in a nutshell!!!