The next morning we bade farewell to our tour cook Ben “Fluffy”. He was straight off on another tour and we were bus-bound for London.

The mood was still fairly light, people were sharing contact details and generally getting on about having a good time still. We bid farewell to a couple of Team Korea; Joanne gave me a special lucky charm which I thought was nice and sweet. I remember in Venice standing out the front of our cabin and seeing her at the window of hers next door dancing hard to the music they had playing. After that we had this in-joke about it – those guys were really good fun; it was quite a shame we didn’t all speak the same language.

Our lunch stop was in beautiful Brugge. On the way through Belgium we were told there are two man-made structures you can see from space: The Great Wall of China and the Belgium Motorway (it was built by the Germans for them after the war). Walking into Brugge was almost surreal. We were surrounded by lush large old trees and in front of us down the path was a soft green patch of grass with ducks and swans around, next to a pleasant creek with a stone bridge over it. And in the background a string duet was playing. It was pure loveliness.

We didn’t have a whole lot of time in Brugge, by the time we finished the walking tour, Lara and I scrambled to get some take-away burgers with French fried (invented in Belgium they were, and here they love them with mayonnaise) and bought boxes of select hand-made chocolates for presents back home, and I managed to cram in some waffles, another Belgian invention and speciality.