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Yesterday afternoon we arrived in Brussels, and what a shocker it was. Bruges was so picturesque and charming, and Brussels… well… isn’t. At least, when we first arrived and walked from the train station to our hotel, my reaction was “hmm, perhaps we should have stayed in Bruges”. Being a big city, there is graffiti everywhere, traffic noise, and hurried people everywhere. A pretty big change after coming from calm and relaxing Bruges. My mood worsened when we rounded the corner to our hotel to find that there was massive street construction underway right in front of it. Ugh.

Our hotel however is very nice, and our room is very large and comfortable (and we were given a room as far away from the construction noise as possible). After spending an hour or two unpacking and settling in,  we set out to explore our neighborhood (in a shopping and cafe-filled area known as le Sablon) and found that it was nicer than it looked at first. The large church nearby was under renovation (in a big way, most of it was blocked off with a plywood wall) but we continued to walk around and found a great view over the city. Later at night we walked to both the Manneken Pis (funny little statue, I’ve nicknamed him ‘pee boy’) and Grande Place. The latter quite a few of the historic buildings covered in scaffolding and tarps for renovation work. The Grande Place has one additional eyesore marring it’s historic beauty… a temporary stage has been erected for some Jazz Festival happening here for the next 3 days. Hrmph!

One additional note about Brussels: Know some French (or bring a phrase book). All of the guide books and travel documentaries on the city has said that English is widely spoken here, and it is fine to speak English to everyone you meet. So far we’ve run into several servers, bartenders and shopkeepers (even some of the staff at our hotel) who don’t speak much (if any) English. We’ve found our limited grasp of the French language invaluable here, and without it getting by could be a bigger challenge. Oui!

Well, we’ve spent the past couple days in Bruges, and it’s a wonderful city. It’s small enough to walk the entire center (only about a mile wide, and about 2 miles long), but packed with history. We took a canal boat ride, which while a touristy thing to do, was a lot of fun. We also climbed the 366 steps to the top of the belfry of the Halles (the historic town hall & treasury building in the Markt, or central square). We visited a few of the large churches and cathedrals, and visited one of the galleries that housed a lot of historic artifacts and paintings from Bruges (no photos allowed, drats). Last night Kelly and I had a great night at ‘beer heaven’, ‘t Brugs Beertje (somewhere around 300 Belgian beers, 6 on tap, the rest in bottles). We’d stopped in there a couple times already, but after dinner we went there and stayed longer than we thought we would, talking to a local guy named Justin who’s studying to teach primary school (elementary). Had a blast. And a lot of beers.

Bruges is beautiful, and old, and the people are friendly and the whole place is very relaxing. I wish I could spend another day or two here, but today we’re off to Brussels. In fact, time to finish packing and get us to the train station!

As before, photos are in the gallery, though I’m about a day behind… it takes a while to upload them from the wifi at the hotel and I’m only uploading them once in a while. Hope to get caught up shortly.

After a LONG day of travel, we’ve made it to our hotel in Bruges, Belgium.

The flight leaving PDX was delayed on the tarmac due to some break heating issue, so we sat on the plan for about an additional hour before leaving on our 9 hour 30 minute flight. Once in Amsterdam, we caught a train to the main train station in Amsterdam where we figured out what tickets to buy and what platform to go to for Bruges. The train ride was about 4 hours to Bruges, stopping to transfer at the amazing station at Antwerp (it was a 4 or 5 story train station, with different platforms on different levels, all of which could be seen from an open center.

After we arrived in Bruges, we caught a bus into the center of town (the Markt) and it is incredible. The square is just lovely. We walked through the medieval streets and made it to our hotel with ease. We’re now going to muster whatever energy we have left and go out for dinner and some beers. Very tired, didn’t sleep much on the plane and dozed off here and there on the train but haven’t gotten much solid sleep. It will probably be an early night.

Photos are in the gallery.

At the airport. Boarding is about to begin. Thank you M for the ride to the airport, it saved us the mess of mass transit during the May heat wave. Flight leaves at 4pm… then it’s 10 hours to Amsterdam, and then another 5 or 6 hours of train rides until we reach Bruges. More to come, hopefully late tomorrow.

Since the last recap, Kelly and I got caught up on Lost and Battlestar Galactica (both of which were really good episodes, after waiting through some ‘filler’ episodes recently), and we went to see two movies, Iron Man and In Bruges.

Iron Man was really fantastic. I’d heard good things, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite as good as it was. Not only was it a fantastic comic book film, but it also was a good movie all around. A great mixture of humor, action, romantic scenes, and all around good acting and a fun story. Gorn says “yessss”.

Later that same day (last Sunday) Kelly and I went to Kennedy School to see In Bruges with M & B (who will be watching over our furry black evil, otherwise known as Arthur Guinness, while we’re gone). The movie was great fun. Not only was the setting something which Kelly and I were keenly observing, but the story was fun and the acting was great. Even Colin Farrell, whom I don’t generally like, was likable and hilarious. I couldn’t help but thinking through the entire film “in 7 days from we’ll be there”

Tonight brother T and I went to The Goose (Goose Hollow Inn) for some beers and dinner after work. There really isn’t much better than their reuben sandwich. Yum!

Kelly’s in Chicago at the moment. She had to get up around 4am this morning to fly out with a coworker for a work event, and returns tomorrow afternoon. Then, we pack and get ready, and fly out on Saturday about mid-day. Really looking forward to the trip.

Since my last post of randomness, a few things have happened… most importantly, Kelly had her graduation for her MBA last weekend. The ceremony wasn’t too long, a little over an hour, however due to the order of events, and our shared last name, Kelly was nearly the last person to get presented with her degree. My mom came into town and sat in the bleachers at Concordia University with me, so it wasn’t just me hooting and hollering when her name was announced, though I’m sure she didn’t hear it.

Afterwards we briefly went to the ‘cake and coffee’ event before returning home. We had some friends and family over to celebrate, a bit of a last minute BBQ thing. Had really good time. And congrats (again) Kelly!

Today we went out to my folks place to celebrate an early Mother’s Day with a late lunch of sandwiches and salads. It was really nice, and there were three generations of mothers there; my grandma, my mom, and my sis-in-law (with my nephew ‘Bart‘, who’s growing insanely fast). My brothers and I spent some time wandering around the wooded three acres where we spent nearly all of our youth running around. We visited the former location of our old tree house (a three-story behemoth that we spent several summers stealing dad’s lumber to construct, which was sadly destroyed during intense wind storms last year) making our way through the now-overgrown paths, and realizing how different the property is now, partly due to some light cedar logging my dad did a few years ago, and partly due to the aforementioned wind storms. It was a nice day too, the weather which threatened rain remained fairly warm and rain-free.

Aside from that, it’s been a few weeks of intense work, and the usual going out to pubs with Snooks and my brother T for after-work beers.

Oh, and about one week from now we’ll probably be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on our way to Europe. Looking forward to the trip, but the amount of work I have to try and complete between now and then is daunting. Must keep focused on all the beer that awaits me in Belgium. Mmmmm… beer.

Caught this little gem from Digg just now and had to repost it here, because well, it’s hilarious. And sadly true.

This video represents the downside of being too connected. Sometimes it can be good (yielding some favorable contact with long-lost friends), sometimes it can be awkward and slightly uncomfortable (being contacted and ‘friended’ by people who you might rather not bother with), and sometimes it can be outright weird. I’m sure anybody who’s ventured into the MySpace or Facebook worlds have had all three happen at one time or another. I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just work towards removing my profiles, and going back ‘off the grid’ and return to relative obscurity.

Wednesday night Kelly and I went to see the great electro-pop band Hot Chip at the Crystal Ballroom. After work we went to Ringlers Pub for some dinner and drinks before the show, where I had a fantastic brew (which I guess is only being poured at Ringlers), called Liquid Friend. It was a lighter ale, with a very balanced flavor (with a very slight citrus/sweet hint) and was delicious. The server said it was his favorite McMenamins beer, and I think I agree with him. It’s at least up there with their ESB served on nitro.

Anyway, the show started at 9pm, we got in at about 8:30pm, went to the balcony and were able to get a couple seats while we waited for the opening band, Free Blood, who were a kind of quirky. It was a male & female duo who danced around singing to pre-recorded, bass-heavy dance music. At one point I thought I ‘got it’, it’s like some white raver-kid version of old-school rap. Kind of. But in the end, I was like, meh. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t great. The songs on their MySpace page sound better than they did live.

Hot Chip however, were fantastic. The whole ballroom became a crowded dance club for an hour and a half. The vibe of the entire venue was good, and even the servers working the bars seemed less hipster-surly than normal. The band played pretty much everything Kelly and I were hoping they’d play from their last two albums. The encore held a couple fun surprises too. First was the hybrid of their track No Fit State and the classic New Order track Temptation, which was a fun surprise (you can watch a version of it here from last year). The second surprise was the band’s choice to finish the show by combining their song In the Privacy of Our Love with Nothing Compares 2 U (the Prince song that Sinead O’Connor made famous). It was really good, and a great way to end the show.

Now on to the really quick update of the past couple weeks: gone out to the pubs once or twice, had friends over for dinner last weekend (Kelly made pulled pork, and hot damn it was good), been workin my ass off, and I finally booked the last of the hotels for our upcoming trip. I think that’s about it. I think.

Update: Oh, I forgot something. The weather here has been schizophrenic. It went from warm and sunny, to cold and nasty (it even snowed briefly a few days ago), and now back to being a bit more consistent with this time of year. Sheesh!

Yesterday I picked up a 500 GB external hard drive, and connected it to my Airport Extreme so both Kelly and I can take advantage of the OS X’s automated, versioned backup goodness that is Time Machine. I got my MacBook Pro all backed up yesterday, and Kelly’s is working at it now. It’s pretty nice, specifically because with very little attention, Kelly and my Mac’s will be fully backed up… and, the drive shows up and can be used by my Windows and Linux machines to use for backups too. Nice.

My brother T and a friend of his created a little video (which he wanted me to blog about, so here I am), a little parody mashup about a golfer, Trip Isenhour, who’s fateful golf ball hit an endangered hawk, and landed him in some trouble. Pretty clever mix of a couple different games. A bit sick in the head, but that’s my brother.

Watch the vid at YouTube.