Thank heavens for travel kettles and sachets of coffee & milk. Having woken up at about 6.30 and chatted for a bit, Linda and I had a leisurely start to the morning without having to rush down to get a drink. Departure time for today’s excursion is nine o’clock so we decided to have breakfast at eight. So did everyone else. The hotel was full and the dining room was packed.  We had the standard western European hotel breakfast fare: fruit juice, cereal, fruit, rolls, pain au raisin and pain au chocolate, ham, cheese. There were also facilities for boiling eggs yourself. A container of boiling water with six wire hangers for the eggs, each with a different coloured handle so you could keep track of your own. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those before.

We were all on the bus and away just after nine o’clock. Ironically, Rhonda was the one who was (slightly) late. Coaches cannot go right into the centre of Bruges, where the Christmas market was so, once Tony got us as close as he could, Rhonda made sure we all knew where (and when) to come back to for the coach. She told us which bus would take us into the market square and said if we wanted to walk it would take about twenty minutes. She gave us directions to the market as she said she usually started out with twenty or so following her and was likely to only have two still with her when she arrived at the market. Linda and I started to follow her through the lovely medieval streets but we stopped several times to take photos and did eventually lose her.

We found a large craft shop and a couple of cross-stitch pictures caught my eye so we went inside.

We asked the very friendly salesman to show us the kits and left having bought one of the kits, a packet of ‘brilliant’ coloured threads and two variegated threads (me) and half a dozen balls of three very interesting yarns (Linda) to make up in a manner that the salesman demonstrated. As he showed us yet more new and interesting things Linda told him “you are very naughty”. Smiling, he replied

“I think my English is not too good, I do not understand that. If you tell me I am a good salesman, that I do understand.” He told us about a customer, a teacher of tatting, who said he showed people what they asked for, which established that he had that, and then showed them what was new. Last week she was in and bought so much of the new stuff that she forgot to buy the stuff she came in for and had to come back.

Purchases made, we wandered on, looking at more shops and making mental notes of landmarks so we could find out way back. These included green benches with legs that were shaped like serpents, a horse trough, and lovely rustic wreath on a green door.

We were passed by a pony and trap - I always think the pleasure of these is in the seeing them, so paying to sit inside one seems counter-productive to me. Several of the chocoalte shops were selling very rudely shaped chocolates as well as many shaped like Christmas tree and as golliwogs (never seen in the UK nowadays). We bought some fleecy socks (me) and fleecy car blankets (Linda) then lunched on Bratwurst as we looked at the rest of the stalls. There are more photographs of the trip on my flickrstream (/photos/jacqib).