Note: I wrote this post on the train while traveling from Brussels to Annecy, which was yesterday, so it’s a day late, and I have since seen Annecy and am currently in Le Grand Bornand. The tour stage ends here tomorrow, and then the individual TT in Annecy tomorrow. We’ll see if I get a post up about that today as well…..

Well, the first couple days of the European adventure are behind. I’m sitting on a train on the way to paris right now watching the belgium countryside roll by the window. The first two days were a nice relaxing start to the trip filled with strong beers and old buildings.

I rolled in here saturday morning, and was feeling pretty good, so jason and I rolled down to grab some food and my first belgium beer. He lives pretty much in the mix of it all in Brussels, so a quick walk and I was eating stuffed crab and sipping on a Duvel.

We walked around Brussels for a bit, and made our way to the musical instrument history museum. I didn’t get any pictures of the instruments (as I was still a bit out of it from the flights), but did get a picture of the crazy building the thing is housed in. Totally awesome.

After walking around there for a couple hours, the jet lag really hit me, and so we headed back to the house and I caught up on some sleep. My ‘hour or two’ nap turned into 3.5 hours, but I think that took care of the jet lag.

Well, just in case it didn’t take care of the jet lag completely, we headed out for a bite and then a night of beer sampling at the Delirium Bier Cave. Delirium is actualy kinda a series of bars in this one alley here in brussels. They have a rum bar, an absynthe bar, a regular bar, and (best of all) a ‘bier cave’ which has over 2000 beers. They have the guiness book of records record for the most beers in one bar, and after seeing the book of what they have, I am not surprised.

We did our best to sample a cross-section of beers off their menu, and did a lot of people watching and enjoying the atmosphere. Even saw a little something on the ceiling that brought me home. Guess I know what one of the stops is when the New Belgium folks take their yearly trip…..

Sunday we rolled out of bed at a nice late hour, grabbed some breakfast and headed over to Gent to check out what was going on there. Jason had heard of some sort of festival that we were thinking of checking out there called ’10 days off’. Turns out pretty much the whole town was a festival, and the 10 days off was an electronic music festival that went until 6 in the morning (and started at 11pm). We didn’t end up there, but we did check out a bad-ass castle in the middle of town (complete with a display on medieval torture equipment).

After the castle, and several hours of people watching and beer drinking we hit up an all-you-can-eat rib place (2 racks was what I could eat, apparently) followed by some partying along the canal at a festival called ‘pole pole’. It ended up being the place to be, and we had to pull ourselves away from the music and the crowds to catch our midnight train back to brussels (the next one was at 5am, which we weren’t really feeling….)

As expected, an awesome trip so far, and I’m sure there will be more to come, as I’m really just getting warmed up now.