Travel Day / Day Off in Brussels

I was afraid I'd sleep through my alarms, which caused me to not sleep very soundly. Getting up at 3:30am ain't exactly my idea of fun, but we had no other options for flying to Brussels today.

We pulled up to the Dublin airport at about quarter to 5. It was complete chaos. Our very nice Aer Lingus group check-in liaison told me that all hell breaks out at the airport between 5 and 8 every morning and again sometime later in the day, but it was dead at all other times of the day. It was really annoying, in that people and bags were everywhere. You can't even buy a bottle of water on the other side of security without standing in line behind 25-30 people. Sucked.

We were on the ground in Brussels around 9:30 and headed to the hotel. Blaine and I immediately took off for our last laundry adventure of the tour.

After that was lunch down the street at a cool cafe.

Back to the hotel for some sleep, which was nice considering I didn't get much last night.

Met up again with Blaine to go do some sightseeing and then some drinking. We stopped at one cafe for pommes frittes with mayonaisse. Uh, that would be french fries for those of you who don't speak French. Got them with both mayo, which was homemade, and ketchup. Mayonaisse is the standard condiment to serve with fries here, unlike in the US.

Had our first beers there while munching the pommes frittes, and a steady stream of crew guys walked by us, stopping to check in to see where everyone was drinking and hanging. We joined a few of the lighting guys at a bar down the street by the "Piss Boy" statue. The Piss Boy statue is pretty funny; there are crowds around it all day long. The story goes that the King's son wandered off one day and the King's guardsmen, after looking all over creation, found him in this spot, taking a leak. So they put up a statue. Boy, them Belgian people is whack!!!!

The Piss Boy:
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Close up of the Piss Boy:
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