I'm Going on an Adventure (Alastair and Bini's Exchange Blog)

Well Leeds so far has been nice :). Room has been good although every time someone goes to the toilet in my flat the entire plumbing groans loudly. Oh and the lock on the toilet broke but we are getting that fixed (is now fixed). I have 4 other flat mates, 2 Canadian girls called Kaelen (from Montreal) and the other called Camilla (from Toronto). I also have two guys one from Singapore called aliff and the other is a britt who we rarely see and no one knows his name..... Also he takes days to wash up his stuff... Ah well the others are all really nice :). Bini has been spending so much time in my flat that she's been named a ghost resident. Bini is in a different building to me and she's with all permanent residents hence her flat is larger and nicer than mine. Her flat mates are called Clare, E J, Aaron and Nora. They're all really nice and the flat has a really nice happy feel.  The first two weeks were good. The first  day we went and picked up our welcome packag...

So the aim of today was to get to leeds. After a normal morning we decided to get a train to leeds which was meant to take about two hours. However once we got to the  platform we discovered that train tickets were 130 pounds each.... If we'd pre booked there was much lower prices but on the platform that's all we could get. Both of us decdied that 130 pounds is way to much and began to research what other options we had to play with. The best we found was bus tickets to leeds costing  30 pounds each. After trying and failing to book these tickets online with my citibank card we headed off to the Victoria coach station.  Once we arrived we got the 10:30 bus to leeds  which we had to run for. Anyway an uneventful bus trip and them we booked into our separate accommodation. Bini in her temporary accommodation in Montague Burton and me in my permanent residency in lupton resident.  My room is Nice and I'm slowly turning it into home. As per picture belo...

Really sorry for the super late blogs. I'm finally at leeds now and am trying to catch up. I will hopefully get this one out tonight and then the next tomorrow. The other days I've missed while in Leeds I'll cover in one blog then take a break for a bit thanks for reading. This morning we woke up after having very little sleep. There was an emergency light in our room which the youth hostel refused to fix...  Anyway we went to London tower today.  On the way we bought  a selection of sweets and fruits including an apple triangle thingy, a chocolate donut and an almond croissant.  The tower great. Tickets where meant to cost us 22 pounds each however the lady at the desk pointedly asked if we wanted to make the donation and we said no which brought it down to 19 pounds each... much better. First at the tower we went went on a bee keeper tour (the red and black guys that live there). He was super nice and showed all sorts of things including traitors gate...

Today we took the euro star train from Brussels to London. We had breakfast from the youth hostel and then they gave us as much lunch as we could take for 2 euro each. Very very nice people.  Getting to Brussels was easy and enjoyed got there 1.5 hours early... Which bini wasn't impressed by. Got though passport check without problem although bini got asked how she knew me and why she'd been born in Kuwait.  Euro star train was nice but much older than what we'd got used to on the DB German trains.... Which had WiFi and power sockets which euro star lacked. Also sadly we didn't a windows as our window seat was entirely taken up by a gap in window :( very sad. Bini slept most of the train while Alastair listened to cabin pressure.  Arrived in london at 2 London time and then went  and checked into the hostel. Had a nice treat out for dinner at an Irish pub where we had a nice chicken and ribs with 2 different ciders. Bini's was a black berry cider and was super s...

A late start today at 10:30. Today we went to Bruge by train after eventually working out the ticket machine. In Bruge we had waffles as per picture below. Then then burnt our waffles off by walking up 366 stairs up the belfort tower. There was multiple stops on the way up including the old treasury, the bell making procces, the actual bell clock mechanics and watched them play the quater hour tune and finally the bells themselves which we watched play the half past tune. The veiw from the top was amazing and it had little arrows with names of different main cities and the distance to them.  The steps down were hairy and difficult but some how both us and our knees survived..... just.....  We then had lunch which was stolen from the youth hostel and then we "people watched" in the main square for a bit.  It was now about 3:30 so we decided to do another self guided walk around bruge and back to the train station. On the walk we saw some people in masqu...

Today bini and I woke up at 8, had breakfast supplied by the hostel and then went to do our washing. We found really nice wasbar. Which is pretty much a cafe combined with a laundromat. Here we did our washing  and had Tomato soup for lunch. It wasn't cheap but was nice.    We also had a hot chocolate while we waited. Sadly we don't quite understand laundromats at the moment and the dryer we had been watching got used just before our washing finished and for the next dryer we would have to wait 45 minutes. So instead we walked up to the another laundromats and did our drying there.  After this we went home and had a little rest and then went on a self guided tour around Ghent (found in the tourist info and recommended by dad). This was nice. Ghent is a really nice place to stay and has a very happy friendly feel about it.  Next we went to the Turkish Street of town where all the cheap food was meant to be. We ended up finding a nice Turkish restaurant where...

A pretty uneventful day. Today we travelled by train from Berlin to Ghent via köln and Brussels. We woke up at 4am this morning to get to our train at 6:45. Left youth hostel at 5 and walked thought the teir gardens in the dark and then many more streets to the train station. Made it to the train station at 5:50. Found the platform and made it onto the train. We only had 30 minutes to change trains in köln and this train ran 25 minutes late. Luckily for us we arrived on platform 6 and left on platform 6 so our next train was slightly delayed and we made it. The next change in Brussels was 10 minutes however this time our train got in fine and we got on the next train to Ghent with plenty of time to spare.  Getting to the ghent hostel required a tram. Alastair decided we'd leave on the wrong side of the station..... Bini eventually proved him wrong. Anyway getting the tram was amazingly easy as everyone is super friendly I'm Belgium. A local helped us with the ticket machine and...