Respected thoughts

So we finished our truncated ride along Belgium's coast, returned to our hotel room, and did our final packing up, somehow missing the travel pillow along the way. Annoying. Then we went to the hotel clerk who was confused and worried that we should be checking out at like 3:30 pm. We assured Mike --- the guy who'd taught us how to use the elevator --- that everything about the hotel was great, we'd just had something come up and had to return early. bunnyhugger followed up with a review of the hotel reassuring them that everything was great and please don't let Mike worry about us. (Well, almost everything was great. She did note that the bed was harder than she found comfortable, and they wrote back that they had been scheduled to replace the mattresses with something softer anyway.)

At the train station we had several small sadnesses. One is that Plopsaland was easy to see, right there and big as life, and still open as it was only mid-afternoon. Another was that the automated ticket booth was clogged by a good-sized, ambiguous, confused group not sure what it wanted and who got there seconds ahead of us. I also worried that we were getting on the right train which is silly because this station is literally the end of the track --- much farther and the trains would go into the ocean --- so we couldn't be going the wrong way.

The good news is we could take the train to Amsterdam, but we'd have to make a transfer. And not in Brussels, the system advised us; instead, we should change trains in Gent-Sint-Peters or as we know it, Ghent. You know, like in ``Treaty Of''. I completely failed to realize this or I'd have been more fascinated by our locale while bunnyhugger rolled her eyes. In any case all we saw was the train platform --- the main level of the station was walled off for renovations --- and we sat for an hour-plus waiting for our connection. Then, we failed to take it.

See, thing is, the destination signs on two platforms offered trains going to the Amsterdam airport and one of them was arriving like five minutes earlier and was on the track we were already on, so, why not take that one instead? The answer we'd learn too late is that, apparently, the train we didn't take was an express. The one we got on made every stop, twice pausing to let the Belgians and the Dutch build new train stations around us to stop at. That lay in our future; at the train station, all we had to do was look at this gorgeous, impressive-looking old building and wonder what the heck it was. Afterwards, using google maps and all, bunnyhugger would come to the conclusion: we can't figure out what it was.

We eventually made it to Amsterdam airport, regretting how much sleep taking the local cost us. At least I regretted it. And we needed help finding our way from the train station to where the hotel shuttles would come not nearly soon enough. Fortunately when ours did come everyone was going to the same hotel and the driver skipped right to what was otherwise the end of the line. We checked in, getting our biggest room of the whole European stay, as well as the highest one, at least a dozen storeys off the ground. bunnyhugger checked in to our flight online, battling a weirdly stubborn and balky airline web site to do it. And we went to bed, annoyed that we were going to have to get up at like 4 am and head out fast, before even the morning breakfast started, to get our flight to Paris and then from Paris to Detroit.

In the small window of our bare sleep, our flight plans got changed.

Bit more Marvin's, September edition, while you wait for the revelation of what happened next.

Miscellaneous signs up around the top. The Yagoda's Bitters may have an element of truth as Marvin Yagoda made his fortune as a pharmacist so there's a nonzero chance he made his own elixirs at some point.

The famed tic-tac-toe chicken, after what the screen makes it look like was a win. Wonder how that happened.

And the back corner with so many circus posters. I don't think I'd noticed before the ceiling fans had 'Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum' written on the blades.

Ceiling fan in action, with a hot air balloon obscuring some of the vintage magician posters.

I don't know why those aeronauts are aiming rifles at the camera, sorry.

As ever, the Cardiff Giant, with a tiny giant Ferris wheel to let you know where the heart is.

Trivia: After concluding his work negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, American diplomat John Russell would go to the assignment that had been meant to take him overseas, ambassador to Sweden. Source: Union 1812: The Americans who Fought the Second War of Independence, A J Langguth. (And I've used this before, but: Ghent was a compromise location for peace talks; some American delegates wanted to remain in Gothenburg where they had been, some wanted to be in London where the British delegates could not claim an inability to get instructions from the foreign secretary. Lord Castlereigh's deputy proposed the Belgian city.)

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 65: Private Life of a Privateer, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: What's Going On In Olive and Popeye? Is Popeye still in Olive and Popeye? April - July 2025 extends my Popeyeapalooza week.