Two days ago, I flew home from a week-long business trip to Belgium. Today, it’s 2:00 AM, and I’m wide awake listening to a thunderstorm pass by and eating a piece of chocolate I purchased while on the other side of the Atlantic. Jet Lag sucks!
While I was in Belgium to work, we did have a few opportunities to see the sights, including on the 30 minute drive from where we were staying out in the country to where the meetings were being held . The Belgian countryside is beautiful. Even though it was February and below freezing most of the time, the grass was thick and green — unlike here where the grass all dies and turns brown at the first frost. The towns we drove through all were charming little hamlets with cobblestone streets, narrow roads, and plenty of of personality.
Dining was a challenge on this trip. Just about every place that served food closed between 2:00 and 6:30 or so, only seated a handful of people, and expected/required that you essentially spend the whole evening there since it would take at least an hour to get your food, and they wouldn’t come by with the check until you had digested your food for another hour. Over-all, I was under-impressed with the much renowned fine dining. It might have been better if it had been less expensive and I had spoken French. Since most of the waiters didn’t speak any more English than I did French, we ended up playing menu roulette. A few of the results were quite disappointing.
Among the stranger things we did was stop at a “Tex-Mex” restaurant that was on the road to Mons (the nearest “town” of any sort). I will admit it was more out of morbid curiosity than any real desire to eat the food. These low expectations proved to be a good thing. Had I gone there expecting good food or Texas-style service, I would have been sadly disappointed. In appearances, the food nominally looked at least something like it should, but that is where the semblance ended. The chips were stale, salsa more like ketchup than anything you’d find here in Texas, the guacamole probably had more food coloring than avocado, the cheese wasn’t even close to the right kind, the meat was from the wrong cut, there was only a small pile fancy curly greens instead of lettuce, there were about a million onions with just one or two slices of bell pepper (completely raw), British-style fried tomatoes for “garnish”, and to top it all off, whatever they used to season it, it wasn’t even close to anything you’d find near the US-Mexico border. The sour cream was about the only part of the meal that tasted like what I get here at home.
Other than the scenery along the commute, we didn’t have much time programmed in for sight-seeing, but fortunately, we were able to wrap up the meetings a day early and spend Friday sight-seeing. My traveling companion and I decided we’d spend it looking at downtown Mons and driving down through the Ardennes to Bastogne. After hitting a few museums and wandering the market district, we came to the conclusion that we’d need a few more days to see what there was in that town. It was rather neat, and my favorite part of the whole trip.
The last thing we did before heading back to Brussels for the flight home the next morning was to drive by Waterloo. By the time we got there, the museums were closing so all we could do was look at the “Lion’s Mound” built by the Belgians to commemorate the battle that took place there. I’d like to go back and spend more time there at some point.
