I have to admit, we haven’t been up to a whole lot during this week, as the plan is for Murray to work as per normal. And he is. I’m on accommodation duty, alongside doing any additional tasks required for Murray’s work. Thus far, our next month in Ireland is completely booked. The following month in Croatia is getting close… Not quite sure where we want to stay after our sailing trip, but it’s looking like it will be Split (I’ve really got to hurry up and just pick something). And then it’ll be time to book France. Too many decisions, and I’m super indecisive…bad combination!

Aside from the work related tasks, our days mostly consist of heading into the local forest for a walk (or Murray for a ride or run) and forays into the various shops for supplies. Not super exciting, but it’s still a refreshing change from living at home.

We have a resident red fox. Not in our back yard; I am pretty sure he/she (I’m going with “he” – that fox is too handsome to be a girl) lives somewhere on the property next door. But sometimes, if we are outside at the right time, late in the afternoon, the fox has jumped over the fence and cruised past us on his evening foray into the nearby forest. Think I scared him pretty good at least once. However, he is either very curious or very determined to get where he is going (or both). Every time he has been spotted, he stops in his tracks and backtracks for a while (whilst periodically popping his head over the fence to check on our location). Eventually he recalculates his route somewhat and goes through our yard anyway. I have dubbed him “Fantastic Mr Fox”, after Roald Dahl’s fabulous story that immensely entertained me as a child. Which brought us to the (once) ubiquitous “What does the fox say?” tune. In the interest of furthering my education, Murray played the song for me, since I had never actually heard it before (however, had seen about a million references to it). Can’t say I was missing much, although beats me how I hadn’t actually heard it until now. I wish he (Mr Fox) was slower so I could actually capture him with my crappy smartphone camera, but I’m afraid that is probably not going to happen. Maybe next week.

Doing the weekly shop here has been an interesting experience. The range of fruit and vegetables seems to be more or less the same, with a few anomalies: e.g. the baby spinach is super cheap – 2.50 euro for half a kilo of spinach – and that is the smallest size you can buy. What am I supposed to do with that much spinach???

The meat variety blows ours out of the water – chicken (both hens & roosters, yellow or white, plus poussin), turkey, pheasant, duck, quail, rabbit, pork, beef & veal, bison, lamb, zebra (not kidding), & ostrich (also not kidding). Then add to that selection a range of mystery cuts we don’t have in Australia to make the selection even more exotic.

…And then there is the range of seafood – all sorts of fish and molluscs, crabs, crayfish and lobster. Many that I’ve never seen. Mussels here are ridiculously cheap (and there are heaps of brands, even home brand mussels). I paid 5 euro for 2kg of live black mussels (and that was not even close to the largest pack they sold). They were delicious (possibly more delicious because they were so cheap – my stomach and my wallet were satisfied with the outcome).

Other oddities include snails and frogs legs in the cold case, marinated/prepared and ready to cook at home. You can buy patties and “protein” balls made out of bugs (or alternatively, as is, with some sort of spices for flavour). And pre-made Croque Monsieur, ready to grill at home (seems ridiculously unnecessary).

There is no sauces (bbq, tomato etc) aisle with marinades and other easy cook accoutrements. There is however, a whole aisle with pretty much just mayonnaise in it.

…Like the US, thus far it seems that alcoholic beverages are primarily purchased from the supermarket. It’s definitely very convenient & it gives Murray somewhere to go and ogle the beer selection while I do the food shopping (also convenient).

Multi packed products are fair game here. Anything shrink-wrapped in a multi pack you can break up and just take one of something. It’s a bit strange, and it definitely feels like incorrect behaviour, busting into a perfectly wrapped pack just to take a single item (think: breaking a 6 pack of beer or juice or water and then leaving the ruins of the packaging on the shelf). However, everyone does it, so it’s not so bad (but feels so, so wrong).

This past week we had our friend Nath come to visit us from the UK for the weekend. It’s not so far away, so, why not? We were going to see the Paris-Roubaix cycling race, so it was a good opportunity to meet up and enjoy the cycling together.

Belgium seems to have quite a few interesting things to see, but unfortunately are relatively far and few between. As a result, there are plenty of things that we won’t get to see..

Anyways, the Paris-Roubaix cycling tour was on the Sunday, and we drove out to Roubaix (in France) to catch some of the action. Initially, we headed into the Foret de Arenberg to watch the cyclists enter the forest (a very popular spot for spectators). We parked on the side of the road, a couple of kilometers away (that’s as close as we could get, with all the cars etc) and walked into the forest alongside a tonne of other people also headed in to watch the race. There were cars parked on every conceivable surface (inclusive of traffic islands and other areas clearly not intended for car parking).

We more or less got there just in time. There was enough time for us to find a vantage point to watch the race from and then the advance vehicles were already passing through announcing the approaching cyclists. The breakaway went past in a high speed blur. We had a few minutes to enjoy the spectacle of the team cars and emergency vehicles before the peloton also passed us. The speed was ridiculous. On a narrow, cobblestone path & pretty horrible cobbles, too, I might add. It seems like a tough gig. Especially for those lagging behind; those behind the peloton were forced to contend with the rearguard of team cars, on a road barely wide enough to allow a car, let alone the cyclists trying to weave around the traffic.

The atmosphere was amazing, there was so much noise and activity everywhere. There was even a barbecue set up, with a group well ensconced near the barricade with beer, snacks, and hot bbq’ed goods on the way (while queues of people trying to find a spot at the barricade were crowding them at the same time). Extra keen spectators, I guess.

After our brief time in the forest we headed in to Roubaix for the velodrome finish, and on the way were able to watch more of the race as their path was often in the fields close to the highway. People were parked on the highway shoulder everywhere, and the traffic was slowed to a crawl while rubberneckers (including us, as we were already at a crawl) watched the race whilst also driving in to town for the finish. The speed limit I think may have been 120 or 130km/h… We would have been doing maybe 20… People around here are real serious about their cycling! Too bad if you were in a rush to get somewhere.

We eventually made it into Roubaix ahead of the cyclists and watched the remainder of the race on the giant screen set up at the velodrome. It was quite the experience watching the cyclists approach on a screen, only to then see them enter the velodrome for the final moments of the race. All in all, it was a good day, and a great end to a lovely weekend out.

More of the same during the week, followed by spending the weekend off visiting Dr Mark in the Netherlands!

 Please note: Regarding any and all formatting that sucks: we have WordPress to thank for. Thanks again, WordPress. I thought the point of these insta-blog things was to eradicate the need for knowing any html.