On the road again

We did a little SF tourism while we were home.

San Francisco sparkled and won the world series. Not too bad

After a lovely visit back home, it is time to hit the road again. First stop is Brussels followed by Turkey. We left San Francisco bright and early Wednesday morning and had two uneventful flights arriving in Brussels at the miserable time of 7am. (The flight crew was excited to tell us we would be arriving before our scheduled arrival time, to me this was not good news).

Normally we are very careful about the flights we get. We try to always arrive in the afternoon or evening so we can go right to sleep. Now I remember why. We spent the day wandering around Brussels in a sleep deprived haze. We were a menace to public safety and ourselves. I thought Andrew was going to tumble down a slightly hidden set of stairs or get hit by a car. Instead we visisted the Grand Plaza, which was just as cool as I remembered it, and stood slightly confused in front of the Manneken Pis. (I dont think that confusion was related to sleep deprivation however; it is just a really odd sculpture for a city to claim as a mascot.)

This is Andrew looking painfully sleepy on our second morning in Brussels.

The Manneken Pis is dressed in different costumes several times a week. I wonder if he would be more statisfying as a tourist attraction when he is dressed up. As it was we liked the fake Manneken Pis statue that must be 10 times the original's size standing outside a nearby waffle shop. At least, he is photogenic.

While wandering around Brussels in a haze I had two scary realizations. One is that people exit long flights in the morning in almost every city, everyday. We are surrounded by sleep deprived tourists just waiting to step in front of our cars or fall down our stairs. The second realization is even worse: some of these people actually rent cars and drive them! I will never feel safe driving hear SFO again.

Brussels at Sunset

Eat, Fun, Ignore

Folks who don't know us too well hear of our travel adventures and say, "oh, like Eat, Pray, Love" since that book/movie is hot right now. Umm, actually, no, this is not like Eat, Pray, Love. For one thing we are doing this together, for another, we have no plans to pray. After some discussion we decided the theme could be best explained as "Eat, Fun, Ignore." The eating part we have written about, the fun part has also made it onto this blog. The ignore part is pretty simple, we are trying to ignore the frustrating things from real life. The recent takeover of the House by the Republicans jumps to mind as does the slow bankrupting of the University of California system. Alas, our ignore plan has not worked quite like we hoped it would: our flat in San Francisco was burgled a few days ago and our roommates had some computers stolen as well as their sense of security. Unfortunately, this piece of reality is unignorable.