Wednesday for windows - Brussels at its best...

Captured on the weekend's trip to Brussels.

Back in Touraine...lunch at Loches.

We arrived home last night after another long journey back from our great weekend in Brussels. Friends Angela and Dennis were kind enough to lay on a lovely dinner for us to arrive to. This was most  welcome as due to our late arrival in Paris we did not have time for our usual lunch stop before catching the bus to Tours, in fact all we had was half a 'Snickers' bar as the vending machines at the Bercy bus station proved very reluctant to release their produc - the one bar we got cost 5.80 euro after a number of attempts! We got back in the groove today with an excellent lunch in the conservatory of  'Le George' in Loches.

Flixperience...

We are currently in Brussels enjoying the hospitality of  some good friends. To get here we choose to travel by 'Flixbus' a service we  have used on previous visits because of the great price compared to air or rail travel...it is so cheap, 94 euros for 2 returns! The journey consists of driving to Tours and parking the car at the underground carpark by the railway station and walking the 15 min. walk up Rue Edouard Vaillant to the left of the station to the area where the buses park. Here we picked up the bus to Paris Bercy station which under normal circumstances is a journey of 3 hours, on this occasion it was 20 mins. late due to traffic conditions. This was not a problem as we had 1 1/2 hours before we needed to catch the next bus to Brussels. We nipped across to the nearby restaurant for lunch which offers a good lunch and service commensurate to our time demands.

After lunch we headed back to the station to catch the bus for the next part of our journey. For the Paris to Brussels journey we had been allocated 2 seats upstairs just in front of the back seat of a double decker. The first thing you notice after climbing the stairs is that the head height is restricted, I bumped mine twice and I'm a fairly wee guy! The bus had some empty seats which allowed the man behind us to sprawl along the back seat for a sleep, which he made himself comfortable for by removing his boots and socks. The boots were ceremoniously pushed off, landing with a somewhat disconcerting bump on the bus floor. Once settled in, in what was by now a very warm bus he fell into a deep sleep and then snored loudly for the rest of the (should have been) 4 hour journey! It was so bad we moved further up the bus to get away from the noise. This proved a good move until a lady two seats behind started speaking loudly on her phone for the next two hours!! I can only assume it was on WhatsApp as would have been very expensive otherwise!

Traffic into and out off the city was so busy that our 4 hour journey soon became 5 adding to the journey's enjoyment...did I tell you it was a great price!