England & Wales 2018

  

Even though this was not really a well-planned holiday it ended up being quite a roadtrip. The idea was to visit two good friends from Uni (who know each other but are not close friends) and who both had babies on Christmas Day - is that a coincidence or what? Anyways, the idea was to have a "get to know the babies" visit since we were all busy with our own new family additions.

This was extended to a cross-country roadtrip from Dover via Essex, London, Hampshire, and the Cotswolds to South Wales. From there we also visited Bristol and then back to Dover via Oxford. I feel quite accomplished, doing all this with a 5 months old baby! And it was actually less stressful than expected, we're lucky to have a baby that sleeps well in the car most of the time. 

We visited many places that were new to me, too. I really liked Cardiff and Bristol, I almost wished I had studied there because they seem to be very vibrant student cities while not being too big at the same time. Of course we also enjoyed the phenomenal weather at the Essex seaside and Wales was the perfect destination to cool down a little bit while still having more sunshine than usual in this part of the world. London was great as usual (even though we had quite some rain but thank God for museums!) and I must say I forgot how pretty Oxford was. 

Now we're back and we have filled up on takeaway curry, egg & cress sandwiches, fish & chips, and Fentiman's lemonades for a while. But since it was so easy to get there by car this was definitely not the last time we drive to the UK, unless of course BREXIT spoils the fun next year.

 

Surprisingly, I also managed to do a fair bit of knitting. I have now perfected the art of knitting in the car (as a passenger, obviously) to use my freetime as efficiently as possible. So far it works quite well, even though I have to recover the occasional dropped needle or an unravelled skein from under the seat. Above you can see the early stages of another "Branches & Buds" jumper which is actually almost complete by the time I'm typing this. I'm still debating whether I should make it into a cardigan again, as I did with my first version of this pattern. 

More knitting updates to come soon!

Bulgaria

What do you do if you have a week of holidays but not booked any trip and you really feel like doing something? Thanks to low-cost airlines, the answer is easy nowadays: check to where they have the cheapest flights and book! This is kind of what we did for the autumn holidays, except that we chose Bulgaria for one more reason, which is that neither us had been there before.

Originally, we wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny because the weather in Belgium had be so awful during the summer. But then we got a really nice September and October so we could be more flexible. I'm so happy we made it to Bulgaria, one more EU Member State to cross of my list - now only Portugal, Cyprus, and Slovenia are unvisited!

Since we booked quite late we didn't work out much of an itinerary but rather decided "on the go". We also got some great advice from some Bulgarian friends so we ended up a small road trip from Sofia, to Plovdiv, Veliko Târnovo, and back to Sofia. Our priorities were mainly: good food, relaxation, some nature, some culture. I think we got pretty much all of this and especially the food was no disappointment!

One thing I enjoyed especially and that I was quite surprised about were the amazing independent coffee shops that we found and where we spent quite some time. Some examples are Fabrika  Daga ("Rainbow Factory") and Barista Coffee and More in Sofia, and places like Monkey Bar in the the Kapana district in Plovdiv. Once we went to get coffee at Costa's and it was a huge disappointment - luke warm coffee, smelly seating area, dirty toilets. And it was about twice the price of a cup of coffee in the other, much nicer places! So if you are a coffee lover I definitely recommend going to Bulgaria.

We didn't even make it as far as the Black Sea coast but I spent a couple of days on the Romanian side of the border a few years ago and remember it was quite pleasant (except the Soviet era style resorts that were extremely crowded and didn't have any "natural" beaches). Maybe if we go back in the summer this will be an option, too.

And one quick knitting update: I made quite a bit of progress on my Palmetto cardigan and I'm enjoying it a lot. Hopefully I'll be able to post the finished project soon.