Author: ryan

Categories
General

Leaving beautiful Bruges

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.

Categories
Travel

In Bruges

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.

Categories
Travel

Up, up and away

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.

Categories
Entertainment Movies Travel

Shows, movies, The Goose, and more travels

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.

Categories
Beer General Travel Work

An update-y thingy

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.