Month: April 2026

The goal of this morning’s trek was to get to the Magritte Musée by ten-thirty. That was the time on electronic the ticket I purchased in January that let us in to the Magritte museum and the Old Masters museum next door. Wait—did I say “ticket”?  When we arrived at the building with the large green…

Mussels with fried potatoes. A cornerstone of Belgian cuisine. This was today’s lunch. Mussels are a plentiful and cheap food, easily harvested along the coast of the North Sea. Although the prized catch comes from Schelde, a shallow river connecting western Belgium to the Netherlands and the North Sea, most mussels used in Belgium these…

Outside of inching across runways in Albuquerque and Chicago to experience lumbering jet choreography in the age of LAL (Living At Airports) where when the pilot announces to the stewards, “Prepare for landing,” it should be followed, once you land, with, “Please have patience while while we crawl. If you’re wondering whether you will make…

Yesterday, once we’d made our way to our apartment and dropped the luggage off, we wandered our neighborhood in the dream state of arrival, ambled to the Ixelles Pond hangout, wandered into the venues for the Belgian Short Film festival, bypassed the French fry shack, loitered in a graphic novel book shop (Grubb can amuse…

It was like the 405 at rush hour. The taxiways at Chicago’s Ohare airport. We’d been delayed leaving Albuquerque, eating into our tight connection time in Chicago. Still, things were looking good until touch down at Ohare. As we barreled down onto the runway I noticed long lines of planes lining the taxiways. As soon…

It’s been a year since we’ve traveled out of the country. Last year, Japan. Shinto, Buddhism, beauty, politeness. This time, Belgium. Population: Close to 12 million people, densely packed. Home of the famous waffle. Birthplace of French fries (yep, according to Belgians, it wasn’t France), headquarters of the European Union and NATO (Brussels), a constitutional…