We’re back! And it was awesome. It was also, as promised: cold, wet, expensive, and full of drunk Germans, but still: awesome.
I have no pictures of race week, as the camera that contains those pictures is currently undergoing extensive and obsessive editing of the exact right frames to upload so as to show you the most wonderful and descriptive pictures of cars going very very fast (in other words: my husband has that camera), but I do have pictures of our last day in Belgium, which we spent in Brussels.
(A note: the race itself was in Spa, which is about an 90 minutes outside of Brussels. The only thing – and I literally mean the only thing – this town has going on ever is this race, which means there aren’t a lot of accommodations close by; options for lodging include one hotel and tons of farmland that is used for camping. And while the 20,000 person (for serious) shanty town DID look like fun — I mean, come on, of course it did — it was 50 degrees and raining the whole time (WHOLE TIME), and sleeping outside while wet and cold did not appeal to me (shockingly). Also, what good is it traveling for a living if you can’t use hotel points for a free hotel in Europe?)
ANYWAY. The point is: we spent a lot of time driving back and forth, in various states of jet-lag and hangover, and on our last day in country, the last thing we wanted to do was drive anywhere ever again, so we spent the day bumming around Brussels. Since the point of the trip was the Formula One race and Mike’s birthday, I didn’t really schedule any “me” things – I didn’t want any expectations or schedules that might have conflicted with him spending as much time as humanly possible looking at a race track. HOWEVER when Monday came around and the race was over and we had a whole day check out the city, I was totally stoked, because the one thing I really wanted to do in Brussels was check out the Rene Magritte Museum.
Hey, you know what’s closed on Mondays? Museums.
Le sigh.
We were now faced with a cold day and no plans (Seriously, Belgium, what gives with the weather? It’s August! Why so March-like?), so I reverted back to one of the best lessons my big brother ever taught me: “When you find yourself wandering around a foreign city, your best course of action is to find an Irish bar and stay there.”
Indeed:
So! Perhaps not the most culturally mature way to spend the day, but we did get to drink some good beer (alternating between high end Belgium brews and um, low end British brews), watch some soccer, play some pool, and make friends with random British tourists, who were fun for many reasons, not the least of which being that half of them spoke like Brad Pitt from Snatch. And, MOM, don’t worry, we didn’t spend the WHOLE day like college freshmen on a bender; we did actually spend a fair amount of time poking around some of the prettier parts of Brussels while Mike gave me some impromptu photography lessons (White balance! Who knew?) Of course, that wandering was in SEARCH of the Irish Bar but whatEVER I now have artistically pretty pictures of European streets so it COUNTS as CULTURE, GOD.
And just in case you were worried that I squandered a perfectly good European vacation drinking in a bar, I have a least one piece of evidence that I did, in fact, go to the race:
(This was taken during the one hour that it was actually sunny enough to warrant sunglasses.)
Anyway! All in all a wonderful few days. Mike was hugely geeked out to be at his favorite sport for the first time, and it was fun for me to see him so happy and giggly at what is surely a once in a lifetime experience. Having never really been a Formula One fan myself, I was pleasantly surprised at much I thoroughly enjoyed the entire race week, from the location (cold and wet aside, Spa is GORGEOUS) to the actual race itself, which found me up on my feet cheering and screaming and basically acting like a damn fool. I suppose I wish we’d “made more” of the opportunity to do some culture Europe-y things, but really, getting to spend an entire day with no agenda except to hang out with your best friend ended up being the perfect end to a great vacation.