Airplanes, Pictures, and Belgium

Well, I was hoping to get a post up before I took off, but here’s where I’m at right now (Thursday, 8pm-ish GMT, 3pm-ish EDT):

Over the Atlantic, south west of Reykjavic, approaching St. John’s (Newfoundland??)
Altitude: 39000 mi / 11886 km
Distance to destination (BOS): 1870 mi / 3009 km
Head wind: 77 mph / 124km/hr

The head wind = 34 m/s. Usain Bolt only had a 0.9 m/s headwind when he won the 200m final yesterday and so I think I’m doing pretty well. I’m enjoying my travels today – I tend to say I hate flying, but it’s not really true. I just hate the take-off. I enjoy the ritual of flying when I’m by myself – having some food and a beer (or coffee, day-part dependent) at the airport, spending some time alone. Reading, napping, working on the plane. Other than the pesky take-off – each one probably lops a month off my life for the stress it causes – I honestly like the overall experience (when all is on-time, of course!).

I’m headed back to the States because it’s time for me to become “official” in the UK. More on that once it happens.

I’m struggling a little bit with what to write because I’ve got a backlog of stories (from the traveling we’ve been doing), but there hasn’t been much monumental to write about from every day life. But, I am making progress because you’ll notice on the right links to our Barcelona and Belgium photos! I have captioned the Belgium photos, and depending on when you read this, hopefully the Barcelona ones as well. So, I’m catching up!

You may recall that I set out in search that Belgium was a magical land of mussels, beer, chocolate, and waffles. I won’t spoil the surprise – check out the pictures to find out if it’s true. But what isn’t told by the pictures is this:

· The Eurostar rocks. We took the Eurostar from London to Brussels, in just about 2 hours. It sure beats air travel – you don’t have to take off! And, we could kick off our trip early by enjoying Leffe beer in transit.

· We stayed with Jason’s mom’s cousin Nigel and his wife Christiane. They live about 30 mins by train outside of Brussels in the town of Rixensart. They were fabulous hosts, with champagne on arrival, fresh croissants for breakfast, and an invite to stay for Sunday dinner (we declined; next time, we’ll be sure to plan better!). And, while it’s typically the guests’ duties to bring good stories, they supplied those as well.

· We spent Saturday in Antwerp. Neither of us had been there before. It was a nice, clean town (what I’d expect of Belgium, for some reason), but what struck me most was how quiet it was. Even when there were a lot of people around, it wasn’t loud. I guess that makes it mellow, but it was still fairly bustling. We saw some of the Flemish masters’ works at the main art museum, visited the Rubens house, and had a bunch of beer at various little bars.

· Unfortunately, we didn’t plan our time that well, and ended up running to the train station in the morning, to our dinner reservation, and from dinner back to the train station (that was the least fun), ultimately missing our train in the end. At the time, we thought that meant we missed the last connecting train at Brussels to Rixensart, but in the end we were lucky and there was one last train headed out there. This saved us an estimated 70 euros in cab fare from Brussels to Rixensart, but probably not the little midnight adventure described below!

· Dinner was a highlight. Jason did some research and found a little place that served traditional Flemish food. The 72 year old chef / self-proclaimed resident poet is also the sole waiter in the roughly 16-seat homey restaurant. (Check out my picture with him in the album – surely only one of the precipitating events of our missed train… that, and the quest for an ATM (oddly difficult to find), my stop to buy cheap Birkenstocks, one beer too many at the last stop before dinner, etc. etc.) For dinner, we had what the chef wanted to serve us, which was an appetizer platter of pickled herring (an old standby of Antwerp), other smoked fish, anchovies, and tomatoes covered in mayo and tiny shrimps. Nothing I would have ever picked but when that’s what’s served, it turns out it’s not bad. Dinner was quail and rabbit – both quite tasty! And… we made the chef’s night by somehow convincing him that we traveled all the way to Antwerp from London just to have a good meal at his restaurant. Sort of what we were trying to say (we were saying you can’t get as good food in London), but definitely something lost in translation there! However, I think he was thrilled with the assessment.

· The low-light of the trip was the nearly 2 hours we spent wandering around the residential neighborhoods of Rixensart (from about midnight – 2am), looking for our way back to Nigel’s. At one point, we startled some girls getting out of their car to ask directions. But once they realized we were harmless, they were ready to help… and they had a GPS! Somehow these directions still didn’t get us home. It was a very desperate venture, and we were both doing our best to maintain composure as we faced what looked like it might be a night curled up on a curb. Eventually we stumbled on a main road, saw a bus stop that looked like it had a map. Really!? Well, it was a topographical map with about a 10km radius. But then… on the other side of the road… a map… of the town of Rixensart. Certainly it was a mirage. But, in the end, it put us on the path of about a 10 minute walk to our bed – following along roads we had passed by several times already that night. In the morning, it felt like a dream other than our aching feet.

At this point I am taking back my positive comments on flying, because about 2 minutes ago someone’s lunch was disagreeing with them, and right now someone else has made the poor decision of removing their shoes. Bleh.

I’ve probably written far more than was necessary. Sometime I’ll recap Barcelona, potentially less verbosely!