Belgium Part II

The train ride was pretty quiet and we thought that we may have gotten away with our wrong tickets, but just as the train pulled into Gatwick the conductor came into the car and asked us for tickets. Damn! So close! We had to pay £6 extra each so it wasn't too bad, but we did have to put up with him calling us "Baby". We get to the rental counter (sooner than if we had caught our original train) and I confidently hand over my debit card (knowing that the small print said no debit cards would be accepted) and was totally prepared to play dumb. The woman, luckily, loved Canadians (who doesn't!?) and was very chatty and not really focused on the rules of the rental. My card got declined (shocking) but she took Katherine's debit with no problems. Katherine was a little worried about the £250 just spent on her card, but she handled it with grace.
I was trying to keep quiet like we were just getting away with the con of the century and then all of a sudden we were outside....with KEYS IN HAND! Take that Surly James!
We get to the car, take some touristy pictures, get in. Then it hits me. Shit. I have to drive this thing, on the wrong side of the road...with ROUNDABOUTS! So I was a little nervous, and I was worried that I would kill Katherine. A fact I think I hid with grace. We started going and it was very easy. We had rented a GPS and that saved us I think. I didn't have to think about reading roadsigns and figuring out which exit to take, good old Jane GPS handled all that for me. One major annoyance was that the radio wouldn't work. It would say wait and count down 30:00 minutes, then when it got to zero nothing would turn on. So no roadtunes for the journey. But it wasn't too bad. Got to Dover without incident...Well maybe one....I may or may not have gotten a little too close to the passport window with the passenger side of the car and got a little yellow paint on the the mirror and door handle. The passport officer looked at the window and said "You almost took off the side of your car!"...Oops, Katherine is on line duty from now on.....
Got to the ferry with plenty of time and enjoyed just walking around the boat and looking in the duty free shop, there weren't any good deals on champagne though, which was a bit disappointing!
Arrived in France at noon and hit the road to Belgium. The GPS would only work in Ireland or the UK, so it was just us and our google map in the wrong side of the car on the right side of the road (a fact that was screamed constantly for the rest of our time in France in Belgium). Getting on to the motorway was easy, but it took me a bit to figure out the speed limit. I kept seeing signs that said 50, but that seemed really slow to me for a highway, so I thought maybe, for some really strange reason they were in miles instead of KM....about 30 minutes later we finally saw a sign that said 130 so I finally knew what I was dealing with!....But that means that I was speeding for the first part! :p
Drove into Brugge around 1pm. We had been in three countries in just over three hours! Gotta love Europe!
We drove and I tried to remember where we parked when Mama Kat and I came in September. We found a parking lot that looked like somewhere, sort of familiar with signs in Flemish. Couldn't even piece together what in said in bad French....But there were no words that looked like maximum time to stay or parking rates so we pulled in and went to wander the town. We quickly found a map and took pictures of the things around the parking lot just in case we couldn't find our way back...A modern day Hansel and Gretel!
Our first task was to have lunch, I really wanted to find mussels and french fries, Katherine wasn't too keen on the mussels, but she was a trooper and said she would give it a go. We walked around for a few minutes, but we were both so hungry that we decided to stop and hae lunch at a little cafe that served the french fries in paper cones with globs of mayo on top. We both just ended up ordering burgers (lame, I know) but it was great to have a burger that didn't taste like sawdust (90% of British beed does). After lunch we wandered in and out of chocolate shops and all of a sudden it was 4pm! We decided to stop and have a Belgian waffle and hot chocolate before heading back to the car and getting on the road to Dunkirk. As we were sitting there, it occured to us that if Paris is one hour ahead, Brugge probably is too! So we double checked the time with our waitress and it was 5pm! Not that big of deal as we had to be back at the ferry by 7.15pm and it was only an hour drive, but I was worried about finding the car so I thought we should head back pretty soon. We walked back and found the car without any problems (except for the flash rain storm that hit). No parking tickets and the car was where we left it! Result!
We got back to the ferry with plenty of time, but as Katherine rolled down her window at the passport window I could hear a loud ppppssssssttttttt noise and I said to Katherine that sounds like a flat tire. FUCK
I slowly drive to the queue for the ferry and we get out, sure enough the front passenger tire (or tyre in England) was flat. We got the spare tire out hoping that some kind person would see us and change it and just as we pulled the tire out of the boot it started chucking down rain again! Got back into the car and talked about how we were sure someone would help, and sure enough the guy right behind us knocked on my window and said let's get this tire changed before the rain starts again. In 5 minutes we had the donut on and we were set. Lifesaver!!
On the ferry home we talked about what we should do. I was worried about driving on the motorway, in the dark with a donut. I was sure that the truckers would squish a little Ford Focus going 50 mph. I had seen a branch of the rental agency in Dover so we decided that we would stop there and see what they could do for us.....