Hi KarenWoo, glad you could read along! Maybe one day you will have an opportunity to visit / for a longer period. The fruitcake made my cousin's wife so happy that it was all worth it!

The breakfast food in every hotel I stayed in was just awesome, even in the Citadines, where I think people don't really take advantage of the breakfast much because of the kitchenette - I certainly didn't need to until the end, when I did not buy any more food. But it was nice to see a few different items in each hotel. The Graf Zeppelin did hot food better than the others. The Citadines had a yoghurt machine that extruded yoghurt into your bowl. But all good!

You will absolutely love London in December. The Christmas lights are what I remember. Probably nowadays there are more Christmas markets now. It's been a while since I was in London. I remember staying with my sister-in-law and her husband as they lived there in the 90s and we went to have Christmas with another Australian couple. There were no cars on the road and my brother-in-law had booked a black cab for Christmas Day. It was really cold - I expect it probably only gets that cold in January now, cold winters seem to be a thing of the past. And the shops - so festive! They took us to Hamley's, which is a toy store, absolutely a must see, especially leading up to Christmas. Enjoy London, it's a very fun city!

Lavandula

Definitely time for a revisit, yk! In Amsterdam all the Christmas lights were up, although my photos of these were not particularly good as I was only out and about during the day. Brussels doesn't really do lights, only in a few places, but you can see Brussels was still dressed for Christmas. And Amsterdam doesn't do Christmas markets, but there are still oliebollen carts (carts with a kind of scalding-hot deep-fried donut). Hope you get to enjoy this again one day!

Lavandula

I loved reading your trip report, Lavendula. I want to get to the Bodensee area sometime so I was especially interested in that part of your report. We don't always hear much about the town of Konstanz -- Meersburg and Lindau seem to get all the love, but I enjoyed your photos. "Tchibo" brings back the memories as that was our preferred brand of coffee when we lived in W. Berlin, and Amsterdam is another place we could easily return to if for no other reason than the Van Gogh museum, but there's so much more, of course. Thank you for writing!

Small world, our daughter's apartment was across the street.

Thanks for commenting, I think Konstanz is hard to get to from the German side of the lake, you really have to come at it from Zόrich.. Odd how it is Germany in that little pocket. And Tchibo, I love Tchibo, I always bring back some coffee whenever I go to Germany. Hope you get back to Amsterdam some day!

Lavandula

What a marvellous place to be living in, in the company of a Horta original! I think that part of St.-Gilles is a really good place to live because you have the pre-metro so close at hand. Has your daughter left Belgium now? Or does she live in another location?

Lavandula

She is back in Canada.
You are right, St_Gilles has a great vibe.
Brussels is a great city; no lineups, no need for timed tickets, just one surprise after another.
My wife and I miss Brussels, but our rule is not to revisit places where we made a lot of good memories.

Loved your report especially the Brussels piece. Brough back back memories of my sabbatical at Leuven University 21 years ago. we vsited many parts of Brussels especially schools and other education facilities.Loved the Horta house and other art nouveau areas.
My daughter is in Switzerland at the moment sending photos of Zermat and Chur and from the glacier express

Hi northie, oh, you were just up the road from me!

Hope your daughter has been enjoying Switzerland and wasn't caught up in the terrible disaster in Crans-Montana in any way. When you are not in the country but just hear about it you have no idea how far away people are and what 'aftershock' is felt.

Brussels is actually a very nice city if you get away from the centre, but of course everyone must see the Grand' Place and the peeing boy at least on their first occasion. But then you have these interesting pockets of charm scattered around the city, which I am sure you will have discovered on your sabbatical. Thanks for reading along!

Lavandula