Bonjour et bonsoir – NOW WITH ADDED PHOTOS!

For Christmas this year my parents have paid for all four of us to renew our passports. I think two of them ran out last year and the other two this year. We had already decided that given the chance of being able to afford to need passports were so slim it was simply not something we would be able to justify the cost of renewing them at nearly £350 for the four of us.

My parents have had a rather large inheritance this year and with a bit of heavy hinting on my part offered to pay for them and to treat us to a day trip to use them with. Having got the new passports through we had compared calendars and come up with Sunday 7th December as the only available date to go though. This was not ideal for many reasons, not least the busyness of the week before including Scarlett’s birthday but as one of the motivators had been to see Bruge looking all Christmassy we went ahead and booked the tunnel crossing online a few weeks ago.

It meant we had to leave home at 5am to get to Dover for 7am and therefore had to be up not long after 4am. I managed to get to bed at 11 which is very early for me and would probably not have fallen asleep if I’d not been so tired from the week before. Davies certainly wasn’t asleep any time before 10pm though and we all struggled getting up in the middle of the night on Sunday morning.

It was cold, dark and icy everywhere as we all got into the car but beautiful and clear and starry. Mum and Dad dozed in the very back of the car, Davies and Scarlett plugged themselves into a film and Ady and I listened to Christmas songs. We arrived in good time and had hot drinks at the tunnel shop and then drove onto the train as daylight broke. It was Davies and Scarlett’s first time abroad and I don’t think they’d quite known what to expect. I have to say as clever as I think the tunnel is it is probably the least exciting way to enter another country – planes and boats definiitely have the edge over sitting in your own car inside a carriage which doesn’t seem at all as though it is pulling off the whole travelling under the sea thing.

Our aim was Bruge – Ady and I had been there before with my parents about 12 years ago around my birthday and then Ady and I had been again with friends 3 years ago, pretty much to the day I think. We liked the idea of driving through both France and Belgium and remembered it as wonderfully Christmassy. It didn’t let us down :).

Bruge is about an hours drive from Calais. Ady has never driven a car abroad (he’s not actually been driving that long as he had motorbikes for years and didn’t drive a car until he was 30)and was a little nervous but did really well. We found a free car park just a short walk from Bruge centre so parked up and walked in.

We had a good walk around, finding the square with statues in and the main square with an ice rink set up. We looked in chocolate shops, lace shops and all manner of fancy touristy shops before deciding that although it was 1130 GMT and 1230 local time we were all starving due to having been up for hours and hours already and needed to find some food.

We ended up at Meridian 3 simply because it seemed to be the only place with tables available. We had frites, croque monsieur and finished up with Belgiun waffles and Belgiun chocolate ice cream (Hagen Das).

Both children were very keen to go on the ice rink but the voice of reason took over and we decided that a very first go ever on ice is probably best saved for when we are not far, far away from home on a rink with lots of very professional and rather competitive looking skaters. I promised to take them ice skating during 2009 so if we came back next year they’d be able to go on the ice for a go.

In the square were a load of horses and carriages which we’d seen earlier and indeed on previous trips. My parents are dreadful for not doing things and then regretting not having done them later. As we know I am rather the opposite and if there is an experience to be had I will have it and screw the expense! 😉 My parents euros and my attitude and forcefulness meant we found ourselves sitting in the carriage of the leading horse with blankets tucked round our legs having a whirlwind tour of Bruge. It was fantastic – the pictures themselves are rubbish but just check out those delighted expressions on everyone’s faces. Dad regressed to enthusiastic little boy, Mum said she loved it because ‘I feel just like a celebrity, everyone is looking at me and taking photos!’, Davies and Scarlett were just utterly in their elements and Ady and I loved both the treat of something like that and watching our children so happy :).

We stopped halfway for the horses to eat and drink so Ady and the children hopped down to meet the horse, Franco and feed some swans on the canal nearby. Then back to the square and off we got. It was just great :).

We then planned to go and visit Ice Magic and after lengthy wandering and getting directions from several people including a police man we found it. Along the way Scarlett intercepted every dog we passed – and there seemed to be an awful lot of them – and did some ‘bonjour chien!’ ing at them all. She’d love to live there :).

Ice magic was, well magic really. Huge great ice sculptures carved with chain saws and displayed in a huge area with a -5 temperature complete with dramatic lighting and exclamations in many difference languages all around you all adding to the atmosphere. We all absolutely loved it and while the photos really don’t do it justice you can see the amazing detail of the work in them.


The whole thing is build of ice with giant walls marking the route round and scenes set up all over the place. Some of the ice is clear, some is cloudy (I’m sure I remember something about boiled water freezing clear? Could google, can’t be arsed). Although there are many signs asking you not to touch the sculptures obviously you can’t resist at least one feel, Davies took this a step further by licking one, fortunately his tongue didn’t stick to it :rolls:

The one area you are allowed to touch is a giant ice slide. Dad was cold and decided to head out at that point, Mum and Ady decided to be grown ups so I took Davies and Scarlett. We joined a queue of people trying to scramble up an ice slope, all of us in hysterics and all of us getting to a certain point and them smacking back down again (I have very impressive bruises on both knees and one elbow). Eventually we worked out a system of helping from infront and behind by pulling and pushing at which point we realised we didn’t actually need to attempt the slippery slope and could have just joined at the steps (which were not made of ice) 😆

Davies went down the slide first, super fast. Scarlett wanted to go on my lap but we sat down and then I gave her a gentle push to go infront. Both of them whizzed down but jeans seemed to provide some sort of friction and my descent (and lots of others) was slower. Scarlett dashed round for another go and Ady was persuaded to have a go too. Davies and I went and sat on some animal furs on top of ice seats. There was a bar serving drinks in ice cube glasses but we got distracted by an animatronic polar bear pulling a sleigh and took some photos there instead before finally deciding we were too cold to stay any longer and heading outside. Probably the only time we’ll ever walk outside into such cold temperatures and feel it hit warm!

It was just starting to get dark and we were all in need of warming up with a hot drink so we decided to head back to the square and find a cafe. We dithered a bit about which square to go to – Ady and I were keen to go back to the main ice rink square as it is so pretty all lit up in the dark but it was in the wrong direction for the car and we were all flagging a bit, particularly the children and my Mum who was a bit under the weather and we’d all been up for over 12 hours already by that point. So we decided to head to the other square which was on the way back to the car. Unfortunately although it is pretty much lined with restaurants and bars on all four sides they were all either full or had people smoking in them and the only one we found with space refused to serve just drinks as they were about to start dinner service and didn’t want 6 of us taking up a whole table if we weren’t eating. I suggested we walk back towards the car park and see if we happened upon a cafe along the way which seemed fairly likely and indeed just a little way along a side street we found a little cafe which was only open for another half an hour, didn’t serve dinner and was quite happy to make another few euros before they shut and sell us hot chocolates :).

Scarlett had reached piggy back stage by then but a shot of hot chocolate (and it was quite possibly the nicest hot chocolate I’ve ever had – Dad said the same although we couldn’t decide if it was because we were so cold or the authenticity of drinking Belgiun hot chocolate in Belgium) perked us all up nicely :).

Our plan had been to drive back to Calais and find a resturant to have dinner in before getting to the tunnel for 930pm (local time) which was our check in time for the 1003pm crossing back. We hadn’t bargainned for rush hour traffic though which we sat in for an hour before finally getting back on the E40. We also made it worse for ourselves by being unsure of which way to go and ending up sitting in one lot of traffic twice as we came out of it and went round in a circle only to rejoin the queue at the back again. Scarlett had a sleep and Davies watched a film. I think Mum and Dad dozed in the back while I tried hard to stay awake to help Ady navigate.

We finally reached Calais at 8pm so decided to just go to the tunnel and get some food in the duty free shopping area there. Ady and I spent the only money we’d spent all day on two boxes of wine – 3 for a tenner and buy3 get 3 free – so 12 bottles of wine for £20 – bargain! and we all got meals from what seemed to be a McDonalds type place but ended up being really quite nice which we took back to the car to eat.

We checked in, our passports were given the only glance they’d had all day and we joined the queues for the tunnel. We started to get anxious that we were never going to get boarded in time a 1003 departure but were reassured that all the other cars round us had the same code as us on their swing tickets and so it must be a delay on their part. Unfortunately it was indeed a delay on their part and one that lasted for two hours 🙁 Despite many electronic sign boards everywhere and a loud speaker system we only had two communications over the speakers to say there was a delay and they were very sorry. We didn’t know why or for how long. I dozed off for a while and woke up very cross at nearly midnight to find we were still sittting in the queue but we finally were off and were the first on the train.

Davies finally fell asleep curled up in the very back with my Mum having been awake since 430am. Scarlett was revived by her sleep and spent the train journey walking around with my Dad – Ady and I both dozed a little. Poor Ady then had the 90 mile drive home this end and we finally got home just before 2am – nearly 21 hours after we’d left. I got the kids straight in and in bed, they both fell asleep almost instantly. Mum and Dad had to defrost their car which was completely iced up. Ady unloaded our car as he was back to work in the morning.

Reflecting back the right side of a decent nights sleep and with the delay at the end just a bit of a hazy memory it was a fantastic day :). Yes it was totally mad to do a day trip like that at the end of an already packed to bursting week but we’ve never been very good at being sensible with not overstretching ourselves ;). I’m really pleased I pushed my parents into paying for the Ice Magic and the horse ride as they both really enjoyed the experiences (and can certainly afford them) and it was lovely to spend a day together as a family. Ady is now much more confident about driving in France which means he will be up for more day trips next year and I was really proud of the children for being really keen to learn as many French words as they could and use them at any given opportunity. It would be nice to try somewhere a little less touristy next time so there is more of a need to speak French.