Happy Surprise-a-versary!

In December, Brent and I celebrated our 6th anniversary (what? how is that possible?) and per our usual tradition, we took our trip a bit early. We're not big anniversary present people, we prefer to take trips and since the big day is only 5 days before Christmas, we usually go the first weekend in Dec. This year we went to Dover and Bruges, Belgium.

On Friday night, we met at the train station and headed down to Dover. We found our B&B, got all checked in and settled then headed out for dinner. The B&B owner suggested and drove us to a nice little Italian restaurant. It was pretty small but had a loft area with more seating. Dinner was yummy and the gelato was fabulous.

On Saturday morning, we woke up extra early and picked up our rental then drove to the Eurotunnel terminal to catch our train to Calais, France then drove an hour to Bruges (3 different countries in the matter of one hour). The train was really interesting. We drove straight onto it and sat in the car for the 35 minutes it took to get through the Chunnel.

This part of our weekend was a total surprise to Brent (payback for last year's surprise trip). He knew we were going to Dover but had no clue about Belgium, until we were on our way to Dover Friday night and I asked him to help me plan the next day and handed him a map of Bruges.

So in Bruges:
-We saw windmills

-Ate waffles & drank hot chocolate
-Enjoyed the architecture

-Drove over the canals

-Went to the chocolate museum and the fry (as in potatoes) museum

-Had more waffles & hot chocolate
-Walked through the Christmas Market

-Went to the Snow and Ice festival which was SO cool. Everything was made of ice, the big structures didn't even have any support materials, it was all ice. Even the slide.

-Went back to the Christmas Market for more waffles & cocoa and dinner and to check out the lights and ice skating and buy some chocolaty souvenirs (man, those Belgians sure know how to do chocolate right!)

-Then we drove back to France, got on our train and headed back to Dover. We were there for about 8 hours and it was totally worth it. It was really beautiful and going at Christmas time to see the lights and market was a really fun.

On Sunday, we went to Canterbury for church but found once we got there, it was stake conference (somewhere else) so we used the extra time to walk around Canterbury. We didn't pay to go in to the cathedral but it was really big and quite ornate just on the outside. The town itself felt very medieval and still had lots of old buildings and character to it.

We went to the Canterbury Tales experience which was funny. It was built in an old church and followed a few of the characters from Chaucer's Tales. It was all animatronics and recorded sound bites. We learned a bit of Canterbury's history as well. After that we went to Tiny Tim's Tea House and had a light lunch. They had someone playing jazz piano as we enjoyed our lunch and hot chocolate. Then we headed back to Dover to spend the rest of the day relaxing in our B&B.

Monday, we went to Dover castle and Secret Wartime Tunnels (used in most of the wars since the Napoleonic Time, and most recently during the cold war).

The castle just went through a major renovation and has been restored to how it would have been back in the 1200's after it was first built.

After the castle, we walked about 15 minutes down the road to the start of the White Cliffs. I have always wanted to see the cliffs of Dover so I was pretty pumped. Unfortunately, it was really windy (which we knew it would be) but also rainy. We made it about 10 minutes down the trail before we decided to turn back and call it a day. The decision was made after Brent slipped in the mud and we were just sick of the stinging rain. We made our way down the hill back to town and had a quick dinner then headed home.

It was a nice weekend getaway and now we've not only been to that area of England, but also Bruges. We are getting short on time here in the UK and may not make it back to see more of Belgium so I'm glad we had such a nice experience there.

Here is a link to more of the pictures.