So having finally recovered not from jetlag but just from the sheer exhaustion of it all I can now confirm that yes, I did have the best birthday ever.

I was whisked away to the beautiful country of Belgium (which until Wednesday I had no idea of its position in relation to the UK!) and more specifically the capital of Brussels.

Despite the crazy amount of different transport methods we had to use to get there (car, minibus, plane, bus, metro) we managed to find the hotel and pretty much collapsed in a heap! Didn't get up to much on the Saturday just for that reason but we did go for a wander round the area and found out that the reason everything was closed around our hotel was that we were in the business district which seemed to just stay closed for the whole weekend! We also decided to turn right at the end of the road and explore. We found a pretty park which we assumed was Brussels main park... How wrong we were. We found a sandwich shop that was hooray actually open and retired to our hotel for the evening.

On the Sunday we got up, had breakfast and discovered that we should have turned left and not right. This was where the tourist area was and all the sights we wanted to see. We found the real Brussels park (the other one was le parc botanique or something) and shops... that were open! We found the palace where the king of Belgium stays when he's in the city and went to the BelVue museum to learn all about Belgiums history. Leaving there was when we struck gold... there were signposts! To like everywhere, everywhere we wanted to go, the Grand Place, Manneken Pis, you name it there was a sign. So we eventually found the main tourist area of the city and it wasn't even that far from our hotel! We ate Belgian waffles and found a street jam packed full of little restaurants one of which we went and ate mussels at! (Yes, we had mussels in Brussels!) After lunch we headed out for a bit more sightseeing and bought the one thing you MUST buy in Belgium, CHOCOLATES! Which I promptly opened as soon as I got back to the hotel! To top off our day we headed to the Comic Book museum which it turned out was 5 minutes walk from out hotel but took us 30 minutes to find when we accidentally walked right past it and decided to try walking round the block BUT I got a photo of a Smurf and AJ got his with a TinTin rocket!

On the Monday the places we wanted to visit were a lot further out of the city centre so we decided to get the Visit Brussels Tour bus that took us around all the sights of the city. It would take us an hour to get where we wanted to go but along the way we got to listen to some interesting facts about the different monuments we saw along the way. (In 11 different languages I'll have you know... American and English being two of them!) We passed some places we'd already seen and more that we'd found out about at the museum before finally reaching our stop at Heysel. Now Brussels is home to some of the most magnificent architecture, the attention to detail is amazing but, it's also home to a giant atom. I'm not kidding you, they have a 103 metre high atom built in their city and you need escalators and elevators to get around it. The view from the top was amazing... as long as I stayed a wee bit away from the windows otherwise my legs went to jelly. So we sat and had a cup of tea at the top of a giant atom in Brussels. From the immenseness of this structure it was onwards and downwards to Mini-Europe which does exactly what it says on the tin... it has 350 exhibits of places of interest in Europe but in minature so without ever having been there I have photos beside the leaning tower of Piza, the Eiffel tower and many others. Definately worth a visit! Back on the bus to complete our tour of the city and get back to the centre, AJ got to see the EU building that he sees on the telly with all the flags and onwards for our final mission of the weekend, the search for my birthday present - the BEST chocolates in th

8 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
8 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
And if one more sleep would come and be gone,
There'd only be 7 more sleeps til AJ comes home.

7 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
7 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
And if one more sleep would come and be gone,
There'd only be 6 more sleeps til AJ comes home.

6 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
6 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
And if one more sleep would come and be gone,
There'd only be 5 more sleeps til AJ comes home.

5 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
5 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
And if one more sleep would come and be gone,
There'd only be 4 more sleeps til AJ comes home.

4 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
4 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
And if one more sleep would come and be gone,
There'd only be 3 more sleeps til AJ comes home.

3 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
3 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
And if one more sleep would come and be gone,
There'd only be 2 more sleeps til AJ comes home.

2 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
2 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
And if one more sleep would come and be gone,
There'd only be 1 more sleep til AJ comes home.

1 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
1 more sleeps til AJ comes home,
And if that last sleep would come and be gone,
I'd be snuggling with my baby all night long!!!

I would just like to celebrate the wondrous moment of me having 500 homepage views by saying... JUST 11 MORE SLEEPS! Yeehaw *giggles*