In Bruge…and shooting

by Jim Bellomo | Sep 8, 2026 | Air travel

I made it! All my connections worked. The SAS flight was a mixed bag. On the bright side, the food wasn’t bad, the seat was huge, and the flight seemed to go by quickly. The downsides included advertised WiFi that didn’t work at all (the pilot announced after takeoff that it would be out for the duration of the flight), the plane was old, things were breaking, and the food that was fine took forever to be served. Seriously. We boarded at 3:30, and we pulled back from the gate at 4:10. The seatbelt light was turned off around 4:30. They brought warm cashews and water at 4:45, and dinner wasn’t served until 8:30.

See what I mean about my seat being big! Widest Business class seat I have ever had.

I hadn’t been on a flight with outside cameras before. Takeoff and landing were very cool.

It was crazy and strange that it took four flight attendants that long to serve dinner. One of the weirdest things was a male FA who was in a regular FA uniform when we got on, then changed into chef whites to serve dinner. He brought a trolley up each aisle, offered a choice of appetizers, and then asked if you would like a salad, which he made while standing there. He did the same thing later with the entrée and dessert. It felt like they were pretending to make the food onboard. By the time they were finished and they shut off the lights so we could sleep, it was almost 10:00, and we were landing at the West Coast equivalent of 1:00 am.

I could stretch out completely and not even get my feet near the well they would go into when I was sleeping.

The other major disappointment was the entertainment. One fairly recent movie (the new Mandalorian film I’d already seen), and everything else was pretty much worthless. For an action film person like me, there were exactly two films in the “action” category. Good thing I had a couple of my favorites on my iPhone.

Basically, the plane (even though it’s an Airbus A350) was old. Just little things like shredded carpet, chipped tabletops, and an auxiliary engine that wouldn’t start, so they couldn’t turn on the AC until the big engines started up (that was kind of scary to hear). There was just other little stuff. None of this was enough to make me not fly SAS again, but it would be nice if they fixed the little things.

We did get off about half an hour late, and as I mentioned in my post on Sunday, what caused me the most anxiety was my plane change in Copenhagen. I had a close connection to start with, and since I had to go through EES for the first time (which meant being photographed and fingerprinted), I was really worried when we landed about half an hour late. Originally, I had one hour and forty-five minutes between flights, but by the time I got off the plane (I was literally the first person off), I was down to about an hour. So when I got to the line for EES, I asked the airport personnel monitoring the line what my time frame was. He told me, “About two hours.” He asked me when my next flight was, and when I said 55 minutes, he beckoned me to a different line, and I was through EES in less than 10 minutes. Talk about a happy guy!

I got on my Brussels flight in plenty of time, but I had to check my carry-on because they are very strict about allowing only one. They kept making the usual announcement that the flight was full and that extra bags needed to be checked. They even went so far as to say that if you didn’t check your bag and they had to force you, you would be charged for it, but not if you gave it to them willingly. What ticked me off was that the flight was half empty. The overhead bin above my row had my camera bag in it and NOTHING ELSE! So why did I have to check my bag?

Got into Brussels, and sure enough, it was beyond easy to stay in the airport and just take an elevator down three floors from baggage claim to the train station. I used the prepaid ticket I had purchased to jump on the train to Bruges.

I got to the hotel by 4:30, took a one-hour nap, had a quick shower and felt almost as good as new, then headed off to dinner with the entire group (including spouses of those who brought them). They’re a really nice group of people from all over. We have a married couple from the UK, one from Australia, quite a few from the Midwest, and four guys named Bob. I am the only one from anywhere west of Iowa or Indiana (whichever is further west), which really surprised me. Scott, our instructor, is from Tampa and Memo, his able assistant, lives in Canada. We even have a local guide who takes care of logistics, whose name is Andy. He is a Montreal Canadian married to a Bruges girl.

That about covers day two. After dinner, we met in a conference room to discuss the very long day I am experiencing today, but more about that in the next post. And some of my new photos.

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Air to Get Me There

by Jim Bellomo | Sep 6, 2026 | Air travel

Today is the start of my solo trip. I am sitting in the dark in our living room at 5:15 am as I write this. I have been up since 3:15, and that’s been my plan all week: to slowly shift my internal time from Redmond to Brugge. My flight is at 3:55 this afternoon, so I won’t even be leaving the house until 10:30. Lots to do between now and then. Ride my bike, clean the kitchen, play Strands and Connections with Kathleen, walk the dog, and pack the last few things and a little more.

I am both looking forward to and a little anxious about the trip. While I fully realize that when we travel, I do most of the planning, Kathleen keeps me on course. She’s the one I look to when I want to know if I have forgotten anything. She notices when I have dropped something. She takes care of me in many little ways. I won’t have that on this trip. And as I told her yesterday, I remember from my old days of traveling alone for business that the worst part of traveling alone is having to drag everything with you when you do anything, like using a restroom or going into an airport shop.

Change of venue. After finishing up and kissing Keeley goodbye, Kathleen took me into Redmond, where I caught the brand-new light rail train to SeaTac. I wasn’t going to make Kathleen drive me all the way to the airport (a 90-minute round trip) without the carpool lane on the way home. And it’s Labor Day weekend, and the traffic I saw from the train looked pretty bad.

To take the train, we drive about 10 miles from the house to downtown Redmond. From there, it costs me exactly $1 to cross Lake Washington, transfer in Seattle, and head south to the airport. What a deal. The ride was good, but I am glad I boarded at the end of the line, since there were both a Mariners game and a Huskies game in Seattle. By the time we reached the International District station, where I changed trains to head south, it was packed.

As I write this, I am at the airport. It’s fun to fly an airline with only one daily flight from SEA. No lines. I walked up to the desk, asked a question, and headed to the lounge near the gate. I am flying Scandinavian Airlines, also known as SAS. We have never flown with them before, but they were the best option I could find. I have also never flown from here to Copenhagen, but that’s SAS’s home, so that’s where we are going.

This air travel experience wasn’t my usual one. Because Scott announced the workshop in mid-June, I had to buy my ticket three and a half months before the flight. Normally, I buy refundable tickets 11 months out, check them constantly, and re-ticket if the price drops. I did a bunch of searches in June, and this was the best price and schedule I could find. There were just a couple of things I didn’t like. First, the workshop ends with a late lunch on Friday, and our hotel rooms are good until Saturday morning. So I planned to fly back to Copenhagen on one of the first morning flights and then fly home. But if I did that on Saturday, the price went up by $1,200 compared to flying on Sunday. So I booked a hotel room near Copenhagen Airport, and I will fly up from Brussels on Saturday, spend the night, and come home a week from today.

The other thing I was unhappy about was that SAS wanted $480 for me to pick my seat before the flight. I passed on that because I am in business class, and how bad can it be? There are no middle seats. When I checked in yesterday, I found that I had been assigned a single-side window seat in row nine. Since row nine is the last row in business class, I will get off first. I am thrilled with that because I have a one-hour and 45-minute connection in Copenhagen. That seems like a long time, but I haven’t been to Europe since the new EES (Entry/Exit System) was instituted, which means that when I land in Copenhagen, I have to go through that process, including having my fingerprints scanned and my picture taken. If you have not entered the EU since it started, you will need to do that next time you go.

I have read online that the Danish are better at this than most other countries because their airport is smaller and they are more efficient. We have a WhatsApp text thread, and the people who flew in today and yesterday flew nonstop into Brussels from the US East Coast. Their wait time for EES was more than two hours. I won’t have to do that at all because I will have cleared it all in Denmark.

I really don’t want to miss my Brussels flight because we have a class dinner tomorrow night at 6:30 to kick off the class, and I would hate to miss it. After I land in Brussels, I have to take a train for about 70 minutes to Bruges. (BTW: It has been determined that it can be spelled Bruges or Brugges. I will try to stick to Bruges because my Mac has a limited number of Gs.) I already have my train ticket, and the station is on the airport’s lower level, so I should be OK.

I will have a full report for you tomorrow on how the flights went, maybe with pictures, since I have never flown SAS before. Their business class looks very nice in all the videos I’ve seen on YouTube. It will also be my first time flying the Airbus A350 (the equivalent of the 787), and I love flying on a new plane and a new airline. Always something to report on.

You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy plane tickets, which is kind of the same thing.”  —Rick Steves