Normally with these travel posts, we format them Country, Day N: Location – subheader if needed. For example: Japan, Day 12: Tokyo – Harajuku.

But normally these trips don’t bounce back and forth between several different countries.  So for this one we’re just going to go with the date.

I flew out of Vancouver airport on KLM, and was fortunate enough to draw a seat with not one, not two, but THREE entire screaming babies within one row of me.  I suppose partial babies might have screamed even more, depending on the exact circumstances, now that I say that out loud.

At any rate, the new noise cancelling headphones I purchased two days earlier did their best, and I mostly made it to Belgium with my sanity intact.

And at that point, I had a few hours to kill, as my partner in crime on the “install equipment” portion of this trip (also named Dan, but not to be confused with our chemistry support person, who is named Dan) was on a later arriving flight. So I shoved my luggage in a coin locker and grabbed the train into Brussels.

Brussels is pretty.

At least, my memory, hazed as it is with massive jet lag, seems to concur with these pictures that Brussels WAS, in fact, pretty.  Although I do also remember something about pink elephants?

Wait, no, those were real.

At any rate, I just wandered around for a bit.  Saw a massive indoor shopping arcade, ate some chocolate.

And eventually made it far enough from the crowds of tourists at the city center to have a nice quiet Belgian dinner of carbonnade, the same stew we made for our Belgian meal, which we sadly haven’t gotten around to transferring over here from Facebook yet.

Also a lovely beer – served, of course, in the correct glass.

After dinner, I made my way back to the airport, and Dan L. and I made our way down to the site for our installation.  As that part of the trip is just boring (and mildly confidential) work stuff, I will NOT be sharing anything about it except possibly the occasional picture about buildings and food.