Belgium trip

Merry Christmas from Bruges!

We enjoyed our Belgium trip very much, eventhough it was exhausting but we were so happy to meet Miguel of the Of The Five Colors Sheltiekennel, my sweet little Miss Sipzie and her brothers and sister and some of their owners as well.

We left home on Friday 1:30am to catch the Ferry from Dover to Dunkerque. The Ferry crossing was at 4am, I thought it was the quietest time of the crossing but I was wrong. They were quite a lot of people on board and they were serving English Breakfast at that time!

The crossing was smooth (I was far asleep with my travel sickness pill so I don't really know the crossing was good or bad but I assume it was a good one.) We got to Dunkerque at 7am, their local time and drove straight into Bruges. We arrived at Bruges safely at 8:30am with the helpful Tom Tom that we borrowed from Vanessa.

We checked in at our hotel, the Flanders Hotel so we could park the car. We are not allow to go into our room before 2pm, that gave us a good opportunity to walk around the beautiful Bruges. The last time we went to Bruges must be nearly 7 years ago and it wasn't that cold, we were able to sit outside drinking Belgium beers and ate mussels but this time, it was freezing. We walked around admiring the beautiful scneries and every now and then hop into a coffee shop for some warm nice coffee and the tasty Belgian waffle.

Venice of the North

I like Bruges, it is known as the Venice of the North, the most beautiful cities in Europe! The Squares and Catherals are so beautiful. When we arrived on Friday, the Squares and Christmas markets weren't too busy at all, we can walk freely without knocking anybody. There is an ice skating ring on one of the squares, I was so tempted to go ice skating but when I looked around, there were young agile kids/teenagers whizzing around, I felt so old and embarrassed and decided not to join the kiddies.

this is one of the Chritsmas markets in the Square, behind those wooden halt, that is the ice skating ring

One thing that amazed me was we found too many chocolate shops in one street, many of them are open next to each other. I know Belgium is famous for chocolate but I think it is crazy to have so many chocolate shops in one street. I wanted to buy some chocolates but when I look at them, I really can't decide which one to go to and what to buy, so I come back empty handed and people asked me: Are you sure you've just came back from Belgium?

mouth watering chocolate fondue

I decided to have a white chocolate coated banana.

We were very happy with the Hotel, the service is brilliant and it has a nice size swimming pool, so Colin spent most of the time swimming while I catch up on sleep! We even have a little balcony over look the carpark but it was too cold to sit outside. The breakfast was very nice, Colin and I enjoyed a HUGE breakfast on Saturday morning!

Colin and his little mermaid at Het Zand, Bruges biggest open square

close up, what a happy man he is!

I wanted to go visit the famous Chocolate museum but Colin insisted we take the long walk to the Lake of Love:

I can't see anything special of this other than plenty of Swans!!!

I think Belgian are quite creative as well:

would you like a GIFT house?

one of the many Christmas decorations

more Christmas decoration

love this inflatable snowman sitting in front of the fire

willow tree full of lid up lantern

during our window shopping, we saw these:copper shoes!!!

Golden dog, he reminded me so much of Scout

Now, some puppies news ...

Migeul took the puppies and most of her adult shelties to Bruges to meet up with us on Saturday afternoon. Between us (Miguel, Colin and I), we took the five puppies and two shelties for a walk in Bruges. We forgot how busy it would be on Saturday but it was very good to get the puppies out and social. You can imagine all the attention the puppies get while we walked then around the sqaures and markets.

The puppy wagon. This is one amazing puppies carrier. I want one for Christmas!!!

puppies inside the wagon, that is handsome Ice (Iceman Of The Five Colors) looking up

Ike (Icarus Of The Five Colors) and Sipzie

introducing horse to Sipzie

On Sunday, we travel in Miguel's motorhome to a training school, about an hour away from his house. It is amazing to see some Belgian training their dogs. In the training school, they have their own pub/club house where they sells beers, drinks and food in the warm. They also fenced up a few different areas so people can train their dogs in different aspects. Colin has taken some photos of the training fields/areas but I am not going to include in this post, as it is getting such a long post with all the photos.

All the puppies are well socialised. They have been out and about since they are 3 weeks old. Sipzie and her brothers and sister are not afraid of anything, anyone can handle them. They also met other dogs at the training school and nothing put them off. All the five puppies are great tuggers too, boy! didn't they all have sharp teeth and sharp claws? They like to tug on my fleece sleeve and we have a good game of tug and you guess it. They win and I lost!!

puppies, puppies ...

how can I leave my dear little miss in Belgium!!! Surely this English rules need changing!!

I have to include this photo of Chiqi (ICQ Of The Five Colors), she is the other girl in that litter. She is very cheeky.

these are Miguel's shelties pack, left to right: Visi (England import), Ypra (Sipzie's mum), Jaimy, baby Idgy (England import) and Boyd (England import) and the beautiful bi-blue in front of Ypra is Jaimy's daughter Aily.