Visiteurs à la Maison d'Osborne

We've been fortunate to have a few visitors swinging by in the last month or so.

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Erica was first cab off the rank. She arrived in London on Valentine's Day and headed to La Hulpe the following week. Her planned 'cruisy' week in London had had more action than she envisioned, so her stay was fairly laid back (something we are good at!) and a good recharge before embarking on her Eurail adventures.

I put her through her 'train travel' paces on her arrival - in preparation for later travels. I met her at the Eurostar station, and while busy gasbagging, we managed to jump on the train on the other side of the platform (ie going the wrong direction). Took a while to realise the stations we were passing were all wrong, and then get off at one that happened to have buggerall connections. By the time we wound our way home the entire journey had taken longer than the trip from London to Brussels. I think there is some sort of Bruxelles Midi-La Hulpe jinx. Roland and Gia both experienced detours on their Midi collections too (in car). We have made efficient trips back to the ranch, but the odds aren't in favour.

Erica was heading to France initially and then onwards to Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Morocco amongst others. As you can see above (from Swiss nightclub site), unsurprisingly for this charming girl, she made some friends along the way!

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Next cab was a much awaited visit by my sister. She too was seeking a chillout session, as she'd been working 6 day works in a call centre and was going batty. She devoured a few movies and Kath and Kim episodes and a couple of books, engaged in plenty of quality nap time and headed back to London 4 days later looking much more relaxed.

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Last but not least, Nige came to stay for a few nights, in between Paris and London (and then on to Hong Kong and Vietnam... great trip huh!). We checked out the Musée de la Ville in Grand Place, which was really interesting. Had about a hundred of the 800 or so costumes for Mannekin Pis (the pissing boy) on display. While there were outfits from Uzbekistan, Belgian Sanitary Workers and even an Elvis ensemble, an outfit from Australia was noticeably absent (there was a computer display thing where you could search for countries that weren't displayed in the current exhibit). We've been trying to work out what Australia should provide... surf lifesaver... ANZAC (not into that one, but the Belgians might be)... its a challenging one. We went and visited the little fella after, and Nige picked up a bit of merchandise. He was really keen on a plastic life-sized version to take on his travels, but they were all bloody heavy. Mannekin Pis definitely has a new best mate!

Jamie joined us for a trip to Brugge on the Saturday. Despite my insistence that just because I had been there before it didn't mean I had a bloody clue where anything was, he still sought my navigational aid repeatedly. Love can be blind, and deaf, I guess. Its not a huge place, so we wound up treading roughly the same path as my last visit (with Heath) anyway. Pretty little town.

Next up is Shane, who arrives on Thursday. Haven't seen him since July so looking forward to a good catch up. Him and Jamie are off to Romania for a few nights for some bloke time (while I do an assigment in the P&Q). I'm sure they'll have some interesting tales to tell on their return from Transylvania!