Our first day in Europe was a travel day, in the truest sense of the word.  It began with us waking up on July 2, looking at the news, and seeing United was canceling flights left and right because their check-in system at O'Hare was on the fritz.  United's official line on it was to check-in online.  That's all well and good, and I had indeed checked in online the previous night, but it doesn't do me any good if they up and cancel the flight I was going to take.

Happily, the problems were sorted out by afternoon, and by the time we go to the airport for our 9:15 flight, things had returned to normal, thankfully.

We hopped on the plane, a nicely equipped 767 with fancy schmancy business class lay-flat seats (which we were fortunate enough to be flying), and after a short delay we were in the air.  The flight was nicely uneventful -- I watched Watchmen, had dinner, then lay down to sleep.  Four hours later, we were beginning our descent into London.

Now, originally, our plan was to go from London to Dover (via train), hop a ferry to Calais, France, and spend the night, catching a train to Brugge the next morning.  Alas, Calais was looking kind of booked, so I got us booked into a hotel in Brugge (Boathotel De Barge -- yes, it's a boat).  But once I started working it all out, it was looking like we'd be frantically making our way to Brugge via train and ferry, and one missed connection meant a very late arrival.

Well, I've had enough of those types of things in my travels, and prefer to spend my vacations relaxing as much as possible.  So, I found us a flight from London to Brussels for a reasonable price on British Airways and booked that.  Upon our arrival at LHR, we simply made our way to Terminal 5, waited an hour, then boarded a very empty plane to Brussels.  Then, arriving at Brussels, it was an 80 minute train ride, with one quick transfer, and we were in Brugge, about a 10 minute walk from the hotel.

We enjoyed a nice, though large and expensive, meal at the hotel before retiring to our 'cabin'.