NATO

The international headquarters of NATO is on the drive from the hotel to the office. Just found it interesting so I snapped a picture.

Day 2 Brussels

 

Started the day earlier that I expected, given the time a actually got to sleep and how tired I was. I was out of the room by 9am. Not bad for me

Had the day all planned out. 1, 2, 3, 4, … I didn’t even get to step 1 of my plan before I got side tracked. The whole day I was like a puppy in a flock of birds. Oh look at that, hey what’s that? What’s going on over there? … I seemed to chaise every shinny object and followed every strange noise. The funny thing is I think I ended up doing almost everything on my list. All in all, a very fun day.

 

I started by heading to a spot the overlooked the whole city. On the way some guy asked me if I wanted to take a city tour. For $25. I talked him down to $20 so I figured what the heck. When I got on the bus and looked at the stops it turned out stop 4 was where I was headed.

 

On the bus I was next to 2 girls from Ireland and 1 from Scotland. They were funny. We had a nice chat between sites. Between sites they played instrumentals of American songs. The girls knew the words to almost every song that came on. They took us to 14 different places, many of which were too far out for me to walk to so I think the tour turned out very well.

 

After the tour I got off the bus at my original step 1 of my plan. Hung out there for a bit then headed to step 2. On my way there I got side tracked by a skateboard park, then a church, then a shopping district, … By this time I had absolutely no idea where I was. It took me about 5 mins of walking around in circles before I figured out where I was. So I headed to step 2, again. Because of my detour I passed step 5 (Royal Palace) on my way to step 2, so I stopped there. From there I saw a big crowd so I went over to see what the hub bub was all about. Then a few more distractions and all of a sudden I found myself at another place I was planning on going to. The whole day was like this.

 

By about 4pm I stopped for lunch. A few more hours of people watching, While I was people watching I passed a district that had 4 cartoon books. That’s all they sold. Most of them had a table in the back were the authors were drawing something in the back for each person in line. I imagine that line went very very slow. I looked through the books. I found all different genres, for all different ages. Everything from Cave man, American Wild West, Sci Fi, Asian, Fantasy, Modern, Historical, and Adult and everything from little kids, to VERY adult (if you know what I mean).

 

By this time it was maybe 9pm. I stopped in to an English pub for dinner. Next to me were 2 couples from England and a football (soccer) game on the tv. If you ever spent time with folks from England while a game is on, it does not take long to make a friend. We watched the game together.

 

I was surprised that I didn’t get back to my room until like 10pm-ish.

 

Day one of Brussels:

Started Thursday in Cinci, got on a plane at about 3pm, landed in Brussels about 8am Friday morning. Already a long day.

I know it’s a very bad idea to sleep during the first day so I pushed to stay awake. I had to do some work but as soon as I was done I started to get ready to go out. I was already crashing so I thought I would try something new. I make a wake up call for 1 hour and I took a nap. 2 mins later (at least that’s how it felt) the phone rang to wake me up. I set up another wake up call for another 1 hour nap. Man it was tough getting up. I did manage this time.

 

I took a shower and headed out. Since I didn’t have any cash so I took a taxi to the down town area. Got some cash, paid the Driver and headed to some food. Small little local place. I met the 2 girls sitting next to me. They made a few suggestions for things to see. They finished and were replaced by 2 more girls. We chatted a bit and gave me a few other suggestions. After diner I went to the restroom. At the top of the stairs right in front of the bathrooms there was a big burly lady demanding 30 cents from everyone going in the rest room. If she had not just demanded money from the guy (local I’m guessing) in front of me would have figured she was just trying to con me. It seems this is a standard practice.

 

My goal for tonight was just to get the feel for the place. To that end I just headed in whatever direction my nose pointed to. In general I use the lemming method during the day and the moth method at night. The lemming method is to just head to the biggest crowd or follow the majority of pedestrians. The moth method is just follow the light. Head whatever direction is the brightest. It’s surprising how well this works.

 

It seems I look like I know what I’m doing when I’m completely lost. In 6 hours I had about 7 people come up to ask me where something was. The funniest part is rarely even knew where I was at the time.

 

I found a lot of very cool architecture. Most of the time it was dark. Some of the buildings were light up very well. Most of the building were lit up way too much. It looked just like day time, but with very little shadows. I’ll have to keep this in mind when I finish my backyard.

 

It seems I am way out of shape. I only walked around for about 6 hours, but my legs are killing me. Well, it’s 11:33 so I think I’ll head to bed.