A few days ago I heard that my friend Esyllt, with whom I studied at University, was coming to Brussels from Cardiff for the weekend. We had a quick exchange of e-mails and instead of coming this evening, she came over at lunchtime instead and made her way out to Leuven. That was really nice of her.
We met at the station and went to the fritkot for lunch, followed by a coffee, and then a mega-ramble all around the city. It took us hours to do the full circuit, and we had a really good chat to catch up with old times. Eventually we ended up back at the station and Esyllt took the train back to Brussels early in the evening.
It was nice to catch up with her – we haven’t seen each other for three years – and see where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing in the intervening period. It certainly beats packing boxes and suitcases, and there’s always tomorrow.
On the way to the railway station, I organised the monthly payments for Caliburn’s parking, booked my hotel here (I’m going to have a bit of luxury for a change) for when I come back and then went to the railway station for my rail tickets for the first part of my journey at the weekend. Now I’m up-to-date and everything (except for one night in a hotel because I’ve made a miscalculation about one of the things that I need to do) is organised.
I had a bad night too – still awake at 02:40, but I slept all of the way through the 07:00 and 08:00 cacophony and it was 08:18 when I awoke. I must remember to set the alarm for tomorrow.
So now I’ve had tea – I was going to buy something for tea but I reckoned instead that I would liquidate some of the stocks instead. Less to carry to the van tomorrow. And I’m going to have an early night too. I’m tired and my legs are aching after my mega-ramble (and it does say something that I can go on a mega-ramble like this these days – it’s been a good while) so it will do me good. And then I’m off on the road tomorrow afternoon.
As Gandalf famously said, “It’s a dangerous business going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to”.
And for me, that’s part of the pleasure of travelling.
