Like heirs to the throne, Mark and I left Columbus on separate planes. He refuses to fly on certain planes (which he’s perfectly content to let me fly on, by the way). To his credit, though, the man made up for it by getting us a day pass to the American Airlines Lounge at O’Hare. It was very nice and comfy, and I got 2 hours’ worth of work done.
Then we got on our flight to Brussels, and both were lucky enough to have empty seats next to us. But it was still Coach, and we are still big people -- so other than a brief nap, neither of us slept. Arriving crabby and pouting, we needed a pick-me-up. For Mark that was an egg sandwich and a Hoegaarden beer. (Gross.) For me, it was a Speck (bacon) e Brie hot flatbread/sandwich. Expensive, but delish.
I’d like to take just een moment to discuss Flemish.
It looks like a mix between German and Dutch, but with a kind of slurred pronunciation like that of a drunken French farmer.
Of course, the other language spoken in Belgium is French. A Flemish separatist crossed out the French words on this sign. It seems to be a prickly subject, and I'm not getting involved.
We had a plane to catch. Some unlucky African man was seated between Mark and me. He tried to ignore us by reading his French newspaper. We tried to ignore his B.O.
Arrived in Barcelona and could not check in to our hotel right away. So we wandered around for an hour, and found a grocery store called Consum, where I got my nerd on. I love visiting groceries stores when I travel, and I had even more fun trying to recall my Spanish vocab. That goes back 30 years, yo!
Then we slept for 17 hours.
Then we got on our flight to Brussels, and both were lucky enough to have empty seats next to us. But it was still Coach, and we are still big people -- so other than a brief nap, neither of us slept. Arriving crabby and pouting, we needed a pick-me-up. For Mark that was an egg sandwich and a Hoegaarden beer. (Gross.) For me, it was a Speck (bacon) e Brie hot flatbread/sandwich. Expensive, but delish.
I’d like to take just een moment to discuss Flemish.
It looks like a mix between German and Dutch, but with a kind of slurred pronunciation like that of a drunken French farmer.
Of course, the other language spoken in Belgium is French. A Flemish separatist crossed out the French words on this sign. It seems to be a prickly subject, and I'm not getting involved.
We had a plane to catch. Some unlucky African man was seated between Mark and me. He tried to ignore us by reading his French newspaper. We tried to ignore his B.O.
Arrived in Barcelona and could not check in to our hotel right away. So we wandered around for an hour, and found a grocery store called Consum, where I got my nerd on. I love visiting groceries stores when I travel, and I had even more fun trying to recall my Spanish vocab. That goes back 30 years, yo!
Then we slept for 17 hours.
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