As I sit here on the floor in the Philadelphia Airport, listening to gate changes, delays, and cancellations because of the lovely weather outside, my fingers are crossed that I can make it on one of two flights to Vegas so I can make it home to SLC very early tomorrow morning. The first flight I’m trying to get on is delayed so that gives me time to update my blog as long as this super crappy AT&T connection doesn’t fail me. (I had to show student I.D. to get a login number, otherwise they charge for Internet at this airport, which I find odd considering the city is supposed to be blanketed by free Wi-Fi in the coming months. Anyway…)
Sunday was the Iris Festival in Brussels. Apparently the Iris is a national symbol of Belgium and even though the flower was on many flags that day, the real thing was almost nowhere to be found so I’m still a little confused by that.
The day started off by fighting through massive crowds to see the Red Bull Soap Box car races. They were pretty funny but kinda hard to see with the bazillion or so people packed on this small street. A few people wrecked into the hay bails and one guy’s car was pretty crappy and he had to be pushed across the finish line. But a majority of the cars made it across the finish line under their own power and relatively unscathed.
After that we wandered over to a greek restaurant to get some lunch and on the way there we saw some bands playing, a fire and rescue squad doing rescue demos on a car in the middle of the street and a bazillion more people.
Pretty much that’s what the day was, just wandering around watching street performances and other oddities. We did also go to the parliament building and walked through it. That was pretty cool to see the whole inside of that building but it’s such a small country the building really wasn’t too big. Also it was weird because in the main assembly room there was this band that I guess was supposed to be a jazz band but wasn’t really jazz, playing on the floor. It was just odd.
Later we went to a big park and just chilled for a while people watching and avoided being hit by errant soccer balls. After relaxing for a while we took off to get some Sushi back by Carter’s house which was quite tasty.
After dinner we headed downtown again to see some more bands. We got there in time to see the end of the cover band ABBA Mania. Ridiculous! Those Europeans love their cover bands and they love their old music. The crowd was seriously loving it and singing along and doing these weird seemingly spontaneous synchronized dances. And half the people had horrible rhythm and couldn’t clap along with the beat.
When that wrapped up we headed to the college area of the city to get some dessert with one of Carter’s co-workers that lives over there. We just chilled at a table on the sidewalk for a while until it started to get chilly so a little after midnight we headed home.
I made it to the airport this morning and am still sitting here in PHL just hoping that I can get on this flight to Vegas then connect to SLC and get in at 2:15am. Then drive home, sleep, and be at work by 9am. We’ll see.
Whatever happens it was worth it.
UPDATE: I made it to Vegas, now I’m waiting for that last flight to finally get me home. I figure from door to door it’ll be about twenty four hours of traveling. I think I’ll stay put for a week or two after this.
On Saturday we were off to Luxembourg. This way I can say that I’ve been to the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). We were going to try and also make it to Trier, Germany but the train ride to Luxembourg was three hours so we didn’t want to spend the whole day on the train and kept our international travels to a minimum.
A little background on Luxembourg: They have the highest income per capita of any country in the world and they’re all a bunch of nerdy accountants. (That last part may not be entirely true.) But you do need to speak Luxembourgish to work there so it kinda makes the rest of the world the ‘out crowd’ when it comes to getting a high paying job in finance in Luxembourg.
When we got there it was definitely time to eat so we finally found the restaurant area and I decided to try something from the ‘Traditional Luxembourg Cuisine’ part of the menu. It was sausages, pork, bacon, potatoes, and sauerkraut. The sauerkraut was kind of sweet and very different from anything I’d had before but I liked it. After that it was off to find these old fortress walls that I saw on the map.
We found the fort with relative ease since that comprises the whole center part of town. The center of Luxembourg is on top of this hill and the whole place is surrounded by cliffs and high walls. Seems like it was a pretty well fortified city back in the day. Most of the day was spent wandering around the fort, the surrounding old towns, and trying to 
get into these caves that dotted the side of the hill. When we found the 
entrance to the caves they were closed. As we walked into the city center and later back to the train station, we realized most everything in this place closes pretty early. It was 7:30 and almost everything was closed. Oh well.
When we got back to Brussels I was definitely craving a 
Belgian Waffle and Brussels definitley wasn’t all closed. So we made our way through the crowds and went to my favorite Belgian Waffle place then sat down in the Grand Plaz to people watch and eat my waffle.
As often happens around midnight, we decided to head back to the apartment and call it a night. Got to get our rest to watch the Red Bull Soap Box Car races tomorrow!!
Since I get to do the schedules at work I decided to give myself a four day weekend by putting my two days off from two weeks right after each other. Then I decided to tack on a vacation day and take off for Europe one last time before Carter moves home.
At the last second before leaving I realized if it was going to work that I would need to fly JetBlue to JFK then fly to Philadelphia from there instead of going through Phoenix. So I threw a few things in a bag, hopped in my car, and sped off to the airport for the red-eye flight to NYC. I got there at 5:30am and made my way to my parent’s apartment in Queens in time to say hello and goodbye to my dad as he left for work. Then I took a quick nap, got some breakfast and took the bus to La Guardia airport.
From LGA I caught a flight to Philthydelphia and waited for about seven hours for my flight to Brussels. I wasn’t too sure if I was going to get on that flight so my backup plan was to catch the last flight to Portland, ME to see where Alexis, Ian and Little Jake now call home. Luckily the stand-by gods smiled upon me yet again and I got a window seat on the Bussels flight.
I actually slept most of the flight there so I wasn’t too wiped out when we landed. I breezed through Customs and Immigration then caught the train to Brussels where I met up with Carter outside of the Central Station.
After going back to Carter’s apartment and taking a shower to make sure I stayed awake after taking two red-eye flights in a row, we 
decided to go into the city to see what was going on since it’s some kind of holiday this weekend. We walked around the city a bit and just checked out a few shops and tried to go back to the military museum that we went to last time I was here but it was closed already. So we ended up just chilling in the park for a while.
It was getting closer to dinner time, well, American dinner time, and I wanted to try some Mussels in Brussels finally so we went to this area where there are tons of restaurants and went to a place called the Leon where we each got a pot of Mussels. Quite tasty I must say.
After that we just chilled some more around the city. We went to a concert thing at the botanical gardens for a bit then we went to an overlook above the old part of the city and took some pictures from up there and down at a skate park.
It was getting late so we finally went back to the apartment where I managed to stay awake for about twenty more minutes before passing out for the night. It had been a pretty long past day and a half but I made it and it’s always good to be here hanging out.
Sunday was the Iris Festival in Brussels. Apparently the Iris is a national symbol of Belgium and even though the flower was on many flags that day, the real thing was almost nowhere to be found so I’m still a little confused by that.
The day started off by fighting through massive crowds to see the Red Bull Soap Box car races. They were pretty funny but kinda hard to see with the bazillion or so people packed on this small street. A few people wrecked into the hay bails and one guy’s car was pretty crappy and he had to be pushed across the finish line. But a majority of the cars made it across the finish line under their own power and relatively unscathed.
After that we wandered over to a greek restaurant to get some lunch and on the way there we saw some bands playing, a fire and rescue squad doing rescue demos on a car in the middle of the street and a bazillion more people.
Pretty much that’s what the day was, just wandering around watching street performances and other oddities. We did also go to the parliament building and walked through it. That was pretty cool to see the whole inside of that building but it’s such a small country the building really wasn’t too big. Also it was weird because in the main assembly room there was this band that I guess was supposed to be a jazz band but wasn’t really jazz, playing on the floor. It was just odd.
After dinner we headed downtown again to see some more bands. We got there in time to see the end of the cover band ABBA Mania. Ridiculous! Those Europeans love their cover bands and they love their old music. The crowd was seriously loving it and singing along and doing these weird seemingly spontaneous synchronized dances. And half the people had horrible rhythm and couldn’t clap along with the beat.
When that wrapped up we headed to the college area of the city to get some dessert with one of Carter’s co-workers that lives over there. We just chilled at a table on the sidewalk for a while until it started to get chilly so a little after midnight we headed home.
