Home again

No time for a proper walk around Bruges this morning before heading home, but I could take my time over a wander to the station to get my train, stopping to take a few photographs. Along with this blip of the City Hall taken from de Burg, I've dropped a picture of the Godshuizen (almshouses) De Meulenaere and Sint-Jozef  into the extras. A lovely calm courtyard and it would have been easy to miss.

I caught a direct train to the airport and was through security and passport control in a matter of minutes. It's a while since I was in Brussels airport. Probably 2018, also on the occasion of a trip to Bruges. The last time I went to Bruges we took the train. Anyway, I say that because as I was arriving in the airport station, I was trying to visualise the airport, because I have spent a lot of time there over the years, mainly heading backwards and forwards to Brussels from Leeds, Manchester and Edinburgh, which I did a lot until about 2015. Brussels airport is also one of the first I remember visiting - I flew back to the UK for an interview in 1983 when I was studying in Brussels. Other than on that occasion, I went in and out of Brussels by train and ferry that year. At that point, the airport was in an old terminal building (which if I remember correctly was quite a striking modernist construction) which has since been incorporated and superseded with the so-called Gateway project around 2015.

It was weird not to be able to visualise the airport. The security arrangements have changed in the last couple of years, but eventually when I got to the other side, the B gates looked very familiar indeed.

Anyway, it was a smooth flight back to Edinburgh on a full flight (but a small aeroplane). We landed early, and I safely negotiated, for the first time, the fact that City Cabs have abandoned the contract to provide black cabs from the dedicated taxi area (see also surprisingly good article in the Scottish S*n, which I link to reluctantly). I had to order my cab (which I did when getting on the plane in Brussels) and then call again to get it sent to the airport from the holding area, after landing. The current pick up point is a little tricky to find, but I managed it ok in the end, and the pick up went smoothly.