Day 0 : And now we begin

We are finally off!  The ferry is slowly moving away from the dock and after the hiatus of the last couple of days, we can’t quite believe that the beginning of our 6 month adventure is here at last.

Although the highlight in this little stress window has been to spend time with friends and family saying our cheerios and “see you just now”, it’s been a bit of a trial just hanging around waiting for Kaya to have her final warranty repairs done, but done they are, thank goodness.  We now have an overhead cab window that no longer whistles (tunelessly, I might add!), a radio that works and doesn’t crackle (all the better to listen to foreign radio stations, my dear) and waste and fresh water tanks that measure and record correctly (do you know how infuriating it is to run out of water when mid-shower the sensor says with much confidence that there is still 40 litres left…yeah, riiiiiight, with soap dripping into our eyes).  However they have left us with flickering lights due to a charger change that they are now having to replace by shipping to our next stop.  Sigh.  Such is life on the road…….but we wouldn’t swap it for the world 😀

Despite being changed onto an earlier ferry, the traffic problems had affected their schedule so we eventually only left at 22:45.  Earlier than we had actually booked so we had to see that as a win!  We finally dis-embarked at 1:15am in Calais and decided to make the 1.5hr drive to Brugge.  You wouldn’t wanted to have been in the cab for our conversation as we tried to stay alert….. we thought it was very funny translating all the Belgium town names; Oostende to East Enders had us in stitches and we finally stopped at Mannekenvere (man has knowledge of feathers or perhaps mannequin feathers, who knows?) LOL.  But it kept us awake as we finally pulled into our very first stop of our trip, Bruges (or Brugge in Flemish).  Happy days!