Howdy, y’all. I mean Mom, the only person reading this. And I guess whatever bots and crawlers are scouring every nook and cranny of the interwebs.

I had good intentions in Belgium, and then the days started getting long. My ability to function with little sleep is drastically reduced (or my need for sleep is substantially increased), so waking up at 5 and doing stuff while KrisDi or whoever I’m with is still sleeping just doesn’t work any more.

After getting back from Belgium, I had a grueling series of workweeks, and as of right now I’m kind of caught up. It’s a holiday, and my primary plan for today is to process photos and get a post or two done.

My boss continues to approach retirement, and is very much in a backseat situation now. At this point, I’m reasonably convinced I can do this job and keep my sanity (although that self-deprecation is a habit that I’m having to re-examine). If I actually look at things rationally (which is surprisingly hard when evaluating myself), I’m doing many things really, really well.

We had our board of directors meeting immediately after Belgium, for which I was unprepared, which is bad because I was coordinating 11 presentations or demos, most of which were given by others. It ended up a pretty serious success.

That leapt right into a bunch of other work things that would be routine if I wasn’t learning how to do my boss’s part of the same things — project reviews (now I’m the reviewer), salary changes (now I’m balancing the whole group instead of just proposing for my direct reports), managing (now I’m mostly managing managers), teaching other people to recognize and raise issues to me and learning how to deal with these random challenges directly.

Anyway, I’m going to process another day of photos and then go back and work on my open draft of one of the days in Belgium. Some really good stories from that trip, it was awesome.

Today, KrisDi and I went to Dinant. I don’t think Dinant is really famous for anything other than being Adolf Sax’s home town, but I don’t think that’s where he lived when he invented the saxophone.

It was a longer and more difficult train ride to get here. About two hours from end to end, and we had to change trains. Google Maps’ directions were not as clear as I’m used to them being, and we thought we had a direct route. After much debating, we asked a train station staff member (we have not always had stellar experiences with such in the past), who gave us directions that were at worst mostly right (right station to change trains, wrong number of train stops to get there).

Nonetheless, we made it safe and sound. I spent a bunch of time on email on the way, and I think KrisDi was just playing games.

Dinant is pretty. There’s not much to it, but it’s in a deep, steep valley, almost a canyon, with a river at the bottom and a fortress at the top of a cliff and a big church at the base of the cliff. It seems like there’s basically two roads: Along the river on one side, and along the river on the other side. “One Side” is named “Rue de Sax” or something similar. Guess why?

We stopped and peaked inside their gigantic old church, and then had breakfast at L’Inattendu (they didn’t have their peach seasonal special, but their ham and cheese croissant and the salmon and avocado toast we had were very good. Then we walked over to the Leffe Museum (or, Maison Leffe, which I think I now understand as “House of Leffe”), walked through their little museum-y area and and futzed around with their activities, then went and enjoyed a free “sample” (full size beer of your choice) and a special gift (full sized Leffe branded chalice). The beer was pretty good, better than I expected (not really having a very high opinion of Leffe, but not having access to any of the specific styles we tried). It was fun to sit in their beer garden and listen to the myriad languages being spoken by visitors.

Afterward, we slightly rushed to get to La Bouboule for mussels and trout (both of which were very good) and some local Dinant beers, both of which were fine. We watched a small tourist family get seated at 13:58, and then get told as 14:01 that the kitchen is closed, so they could drink, but no food after 14:00. Then we walked around the quaint little town, shopped in a chocolate shop and a crafts store, then a beer store. Wandered a bit more, ran across a group of deaf bikers and took turns photographing each other, and then back to the train… which is where we are now.

We’re headed back to Brussels, probably we’ll drop stuff at the hotel room and then diced what (if anything) we want to do abut dinner. Until then…cat naps on the train, hopefully that don’t result in me waking up in unknown locations with no cell phone when the station police clear the trains at the end of the night.

We arrived Monday morning (after spending about 1.5 hours waiting in a pointless line for a uniformed Belgian pencil neck to peer querulously at our passports and say, “What are you doing here?”). At least we got a free tiny bottle of water while we interminably queued.

After passport control, our bags were sitting and waiting for us (hooray!), then we went and found the train station and were puzzled by how much simpler it seemed than the last time we were in Belgium. Did it get simpler? Are we just more seasoned travelers? No problem getting to our room (though there was some mild drama getting info from our host and getting information to get in the door).

Immediately after early check-in, we headed to Cantillon. We figured we would find food on the way, but we did not. That’s OK. We did the Cantillon tour again, it hasn’t changed much — but the bar has changed a lot. In fact it’s a completely different bar, though the staff and the selection are quite familiar.

After our tour-related samples, I got in line to get a lambic we hadn’t tried before. Not too oddly, it was the same lambic being ordered by the guy in front of me…more oddly, he ordered the last bottle in existence, apparently. He offered to share, we ordered a bottle of Lou Pepe Kriek 2023 to share in return, and we got to know my new friend John Corners (translated literally from Italian — actually lives near where my brother currently lives in Italy). We talked and shared beer with JC for a couple hours before he had to go to the airport and fly home. Lots of weird parallels — he had just run in a marathon in Leuven (where we were going the next day), and he gave us some recommendations. We decided after a while that I was his third wife, and he was my third wife.

After hanging with JC (and KrisDi nodding off at the bar), we headed back toward our room. We stopped at Kebap X for surprisingly good doner kebap with some free tea for lunch, went back to the room, went to Wolf Food Market, and then tried to go to Nuitnigenough (one hour wait? nah), and went somewhere else (55% confidence it was Boemvol Brasserie) for dinner, where we both had somewhat traditional Belgian food (stouvflees and white sausage).

We stopped at a grocery store for basic supplies after and went back to the room. Then we realized we didn’t have any soap so I went out for that.

The next morning, after a jet-lag-ridden mediocre-at-best night of sleep, we got some coffee and figured out how to go to Leuven. KrisDi had decided she wanted to go there independently of the fact that I have work friends who live there.

Breakfast at Barleuv, which was really good. Both of us had piles of meaty things on top of waffles. Took pictures in front of the town hall and cathedral, went into the library and climbed up the bell tower, came back down and walked to Oude Markt and then the botanical garden. Then Malz based on John Corners’ recommendation (talked for a while with the California bartender who was very nice), then Oude Markt. We tried to go to Domus, but it was closed. We went to Cafe Fiere Magriet, also on JC’s recommendation.

We met with my Belgian work friends at Gloria for dinner, where I had beef tartare and KrisDi got pork cheek stew (might have been stouvflees again).

Then we went back to the room for jet-lag-ridden mediocre sleep.

We set an alarm for 8, but didn’t sleep until it went off. Grabbed some coffee and an apple tart in the morning and headed to Liege. Long walk from the train station there, but liege waffles for breakfast and then a million jillion stairs (374 + 57 to be precise). We walked around at the top of Liege for a while and then decided to try and follow a different route down…which we discovered was not actually a route, and I convinced KrisDi to follow me anyway, which included plowing through thorns and climbing over a wire fence on a six inch wide dirt “path” that warned us against touching any dead boars we found. Not a normal KrisDi thing…but she was willing to try anything to avoid backtracking back up another 100 stairs or so. I enjoyed it.

We went to Peket after that and had some weird fruit infused brandy-like stuff that was pretty good. Then we had Liege meatballs at Bouletterie Lieges. They were pretty good. We walked to Watch Smell Taste (whiskey/beer store), wandered around a mall, then walked around St. Maguerite, then a beer at TriPick before getting supplies at Carrefour Express and drinking Tripel Karmeliet on the train on the way back.

We had dinner a couple hours ago at Cafe Ommegang (it was fine), then dawdled our way back to the room, where I’m now drinking a whisky infused Gouden Carolus while I try to recall all that has happened in the last two days.

Bed time soon…

In years past, KrisDi and I have taken notes each day on paper, or mostly kept up with it when we could get a chance to go back and write down notes. Then I would laboriously turn rough handwritten notes into blog posts with photos and links. I was very pleased because we were talking about what to do when we land (airport -> room to drop off bags -> breakfast somewhere -> Cantillon), and I was trying to remember someplace we had breakfast at during two previous visits, and I was able to find it on my blog in like 30 seconds.

KrisDi and I are currently on a plane in between Atlanta GA and Brussels. We’re fancy now — flying on Delta in Premium Select (after a 1st class flight from SEA to ATL). Internet is available on the plane (which is how I’m writing this).

I’ve tentatively decided to just write about daily experiences as we go through the trip and not worry about synchronizing photos or completeness. So this is step one, I guess.

Flights out…flight leaving Seattle was at like 06:00, we got to the airport before Delta’s counter opened to take our bags, got done with that before TSA Pre-check security opened to let us in, and go through that before Delta’s Sky Club opened at 4:15 AM. Nothing particularly notable about any of this.

Flight took off on schedule, made it to Atlanta on schedule, didn’t have any real difficulties (aside from shitty signage) getting to our terminal and finding which of the ~7 Delta clubs were closest to our gate. We chatted in the club with a very talked pilot / ex-cop who lives in Tallahassee, on his way back from a European vacation (Ireland for sure, don’t remember where else they went). His name is Pete. I remember because when we told him he should go to Scotland and try this drink they’re famous for but I can’t remember what it’s called…he’s like, “No way, they make it from peat!”

The topic of me flying to Japan a lot came up, which brought up my employer, which sort of drew in a neighbor who works at a manufacturer of steel and aluminum production equipment who buys a lot of our hand tools.

We talked a lot about travel and food. Apparently he’s a private pilot for “rich people.” He and his wife seem to have similar interests and senses of humor to us, though they’re about 20 years older. I think by the time we parted ways, they wanted to be friends forever.

We didn’t get the upgrade to Delta One (some day, some day…) from ATL to Brussels. Premium Select is pretty good though.

I think we’re about an hour and a half from destination…hopefully next post will be exhausted and saturated with lambic and gueuze, from our AirBnB lodging for the week. Speaking of which, an unusual plan for this vacation: Stay in one place the whole time and just take day trips out to different parts of Belgium. One thing I’m unreasonably excited about is seeing some of my Belgian colleagues in Belgium for the first time, which is funny because I’ve seen them in Japan and Germany and the US so many times.