Brussels

In celebration of the one year anniversary of our first date and in conjunction with my marathon, Sara came out to Frankfurt for ten glorious days. It was fantastic to have her out here.  With the exception of Monday, where I was recovering from the marathon, we both worked the whole week.  It was really awesome to see how our 'normal' life might look together here.  Granted, this week our normal life was much busier than normal, but it still foreshadowed our future.  I liked what I saw.

The capstone to the week was a trip to Brussels.  I had been there once before for a few days a decade ago, but didn't remember much other than good food and good beer.  We got there late Friday and went to dinner after checking into our hotel.  We both had delicious mussels at this quirky restaurant where the maître d both serenaded the customers in a dozen languages and his adorable French-speaking granddaughter brought bread to the table.

The next day, we made our way around town seeing most of the sites. Brussels is both really awesome and fairly tame at the same time.  I would never send anyone to Brussels if they come to Europe only once or twice, but I would not object to returning myself for another short trip.  On the one hand, the tourist sites are nice enough, but nothing spectacular.  On the other hand, the restaurants, bars, shops and people watching are all fairly top-notch.

Unfortunately, by late Saturday afternoon, Sara and I both started to feel a bit under the weather.  We crashed back at the hotel and then didn't leave again until it was time to check out on Sunday morning.  The downside to this, besides feeling yucky, was not getting to eat out again in Brussels.  The upside was watching the Nebraska-Northwestern game on Sara's computer and screaming my head off at 1 a.m. when Nebraska won on a hail Mary.

Lots of cute quirky stores in Brussels

Awesome lectern

Lots of neon signs near the Grand Place